Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/311

Rh her, and the wolves came stealing over the snow. She worked furiously, with the strength of desperation, and little by little she won back a tiny flame.

Her nervous vitality was flowing from her in a frightful stream. Too long she had toiled without food in the constant presence of danger, and she was very near indeed to utter exhaustion. But at the same time she knew she must not faint. That was one thing she could not do,—to fall unconscious before the last of her three cartridges was expended in the right way.

Again she went forth to the sapling, and this time it seemed to her that if she simply tossed the ax through the air, she could fell one of the gray crowd. But when she stooped to pick it up—She did n't finish the thought. She turned to coax the fire. And then she leaned sobbing over the sled.

"What's the use?" she cried. "He won't come back. What's the use of fighting any more?"

"There's always use of fighting," her father told her. He seemed to speak with difficulty, and his face looked strange and white. The cold and the exposure were having their effect on his weakened system, and unconsciousness was a near shadow indeed. "But, dearest,—if