Snow-Blind | Page 6

aching ankle Pete would be sliding out on soundless skis,
now poised for breathless flight down some long slope, now leaping
fallen trees or buried ditches. He spent half of his wild young
restlessness in such long night runs when, in a sort of ecstasy, he
outraced the stifled longings of his exiled youth. But there would be no
ski-running for several nights now. He was a prisoner, and at a time
when imprisonment was hard to bear.
If only there were some way of getting quick news of Hugh! Why had
Bella and he let this thing happen? Why had they stood helplessly by
and allowed the rash fool to go singing to his own destruction? They
might have held him by force, if not by argument, long enough to bring
him to his senses. They had been weak; they were always weak before
Hugh's magnetic strength--always the audience, the following; Bella,
for all her devastating tongue, no less than himself. And Hugh's liberty,
perhaps his life, might be the price of their acquiescence.
Straining forward in his chair, listening, there came to Pete, across the
silence, the sound of skis.
He rose and hopped to the door, flinging it wide. He could not see
above the top of the drift which rose just beyond the roof to a height of
nine or ten feet, but listening intently, he thought he recognized a
familiar slight unevenness in the sliding of the skis.
"Bella!" he shouted, his boy-voice ringing with relief. "Bella! Here's
Hugh. He's come back."
Bella was instantly at his side. They stood waiting in the doorway.
Against the violet sky darkening above the blue wall of snow, a bulky
figure rose, blotting out the light. It half slid, half tumbled down upon
them, clumsy and shapeless.
"Let us in," panted Hugh. "Let us in."
Slipping his feet from the straps of his skis, he staggered past them and
they saw that he was carrying a woman in his arms.

CHAPTER III
"Shut the door," Hugh whispered, and laid his burden down on a big
black bear-hide near the stove. He knelt beside it. He had no eyes for
anything else. Pete, hobbling to him, gazed curiously down, and Bella
knelt opposite and drew away Hugh's mackinaw coat, with which he
had wrapped his trove. It was not a woman whom they looked down
upon, but a girl, and very young--perhaps not yet seventeen--a girl with
cropped dark curly hair and a face so wan and blue and at the same
time so scorched by the snow-glare that its exquisiteness of feature was
all the more marked. Hugh's handkerchief was tied loosely across her
eyes.
"I heard her crying in the snow," he said with ineffable tenderness;
"crying like a little bleating lamb with cold and pain and hunger and
fright--the most pitiful thing in God's cruel trap of life. She's
blind--snow-blind."
Pete gave a sharp exclamation, and Bella gently removed the
handkerchief. The small figure moaned and moved its head. The lids of
her eyes were swollen and discolored.
"Snow-blind," echoed Bella.
"A bad case," said Hugh. "Get her some soup, Bella, and--perhaps, hot
water--I don't know." He looked up helplessly.
Bella went to the kitchen. She had regained her old look of dumbness.
Beside the figure on the floor Pete touched one of the girl's small
clenched hands. It was like ice. At the touch she moaned, and Hugh
ordered sharply: "Let her alone." So the boy dragged himself up again
and stood by the mantel, watching Hugh with puzzled and wondering
eyes.
"Think what she's been through," Hugh murmured, "that little delicate
thing, wandering for two days, out in this cold--scared by the woods,

blinded by the pain, starving. When I found her, you'd have thought
she'd be afraid of a wild man like me, but she just lifted up her arms
like a baby and dropped her head on my shoulder. She--she patted my
cheek--"
Bella brought the soup, and Hugh, raising the small black head on the
crook of his arm, forced a spoonful between the clenched teeth. The
girl swallowed and began again to whimper: "Oh, my eyes! My eyes!
They hurt me so!" She turned her face against Hugh's chest and clung
to him.
"They'll be better soon," he soothed her; then fiercely to Bella: "Can't
we do something? Don't you know what to do?"
Again Bella went to the kitchen, moving like an automaton. Hugh
coaxed and murmured, feeding the girl in spite of her pain. He
managed to force a little of the soup down her throat, and a faint stain
of color came back to her lips and cheeks. Bella presently reappeared
with salve and lotion, and Hugh helped her hold the swollen lids apart,
his big hands very skillful,