Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 18, 1928 — page 127: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE EVIL PANORAMA. with particles much as though the very air about them had frozen and clung to their shaggy hair. The natives fought off the numbness of cold, and forced themselves into warming activities. They heaped boughs upon the fire and fanned it into super-being while Tad Raynor and the girl stood close by its saving warmth. Breakfast was a treat in that chill world. Warm coffee set blood to stirring where it had seemed to coagulate in their veins. Their strength and! spirit rose, and Tad made pretense of examining Barb’s parka and wraps to be certain that she would not freeze. Yet their first motion beside and be- hind the sleds brought to them a glowing warmth that made effort a joy and privi- lege. There seemed to the girl no such thing as exhaustion throughout that brief, gray day. The Indians shouted their commands, the dogs leaned into the traces, and the snow whined its incessant song of defeat as trees whirled behind them along their course. It was a gorgeous experience, a thing that precluded all but the raw struggle for existence and tested the heart and the mind and the body of the men and dogs alike. They were the only life that showed dur- ing the bitter hours except here and there a ptarmigan or a snow-white rabbit that darted away from them in a frenzy of fear. The noonday meal was a repetition of that served the day before, a tiny fire, a boiling pot, a pan of bacon, and biscuits from the packs. But it was a glorious meal. It roused resistance in them again and set them at the trail ahead with a will that was not to be denied. Conversation on the trail was next to im- possible. Barb opened her parka once to speak. For an hour afterward her cheeks stung with the cold as they might have from an acid douche. Her nostrils con- tracted and dried completely under touch of the clear, thin air, her throat felt burned, rather than chilled. The inside of her parka became caked with frozen breath, and though she felt the effort of the running, she did not tire as she 925 had expected. To ride on the sled for any length of time was to find her limbs stiff- ened, and a general lassitude enveloping her from which it was most difficult to es- cape. But finally the gray shadows lengthened into gloom, and Raynor called a halt for the night. The little tents appeared as if by magic from the sleds, and under the deft hands of the natives they took shape against the background of brown rock and white snow. A fire roared its welcome song in the center of the little camp, its warmth being swept through the flaps of the tents by such air as stirred about the rocks. Food aplenty was soon simmering. Clear, cold water quaffed from a tin cup quenched the thirst of running, and dried fish tossed to the malamutes created for a moment a wild snapping and snarling that soon died down as the milling animals burrowed into the snow and banked down for the freezing night ahead. Once again the two travelers sat by the fireside. This time Tad Raynor could not summon the courage to slip his arm about the girl’s body and hold her close to him. All day long the light he had seen in her eyes remained before his memory. It was a source of both happiness and unsuspected timidity to him. Since having seen it he was different. It dawned upon him that he loved Barbara Howland, and it did not dawn upon him that Barbara Howland loved him. In her every move he saw but the cam- araderie they had enjoyed since the day of their meeting. He felt that the change was in himself, and that he must keep that change from the girl at all hazards. : It seemed cowardly of him to speak to this wonderful creature of love at a time and in a place such as this frozen. waste. What had she to choose? He, and he alone, but for the four natives, spelled manhood to her at this time, manhood and pro- tection. He felt that he was lacking in manhood by harboring the strange thoughts that had come to his mind so suddenly. He hated himself, forced thoughts of love from his mind, only to succumb to them again when Gomichooks (E@)