Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/177

 sheep sunk down and stood stupidly until pushed forward by those behind them.

Twelve o'clock came and there was no change save that the drifts were higher and she could see a little farther into the white wilderness.

"What if—what if—" she gulped, for the thought brought a contraction of the throat muscles that made swallowing difficult. "What if there were twenty-four more of it!" Could she stand it? She was tired to exhaustion with walking, with the strain of resisting the cold, and the all-night vigil—weak, too, with hunger.

Was she to become another of those that the first Chinook uncovered? One of the already large army that have paid with their lives in just such circumstances for their loyalty, or their bad judgment? After all she had gone through to reach the goal she had set for herself was she to go out like this—like a common herder who had no thought or ambition beyond the debauch when he drew his wages?

When the dimming light told her the afternoon was waning, and then indications of darkness and another night of torture, despair filled her. Numb, hungry, her vitality at low ebb, she doubted her ability to weather it. Was she being punished, she wondered, for protesting against the life the Fates appeared to have mapped out for her? Was this futile inane end coming to her because since that day when she had stood looking down upon Prouty and vowed to succeed she had fought and struggled and struck back, instead of meekly acknowledging herself crushed and beaten? Had she shaken her fist at the Almighty in so doing, when she should have bowed her head and folded her hands in resignation? She did not know; in her despair and bewilderment she lost all logic, all perspective; she knew only that in spite of the exhaustion