Page:Mistress Madcap (1937).pdf/74

 in much the same direction she and her family had fled not so long ago, Mehitable could scarcely make out, through the openings of the woods, the valley below.

But her face and her heart were turned upward, ever upward, toward that goal to which she had been sped by the simple pleading of an Indian's eyes and the memory of her promise to her big brother.

She reached, at last, the great sentinel pines upon the mountain ridge, underneath which had been prepared the signal mounds of brush and logs. But arrived there, she gazed in acute dismay at the snow which covered them until each mound looked like miniature mountains of snow. However, she set to work grimly to drag away the wet branches and pile the drier brush on top.

Then how her fingers ached with the cold as she knelt and patiently worked with flint and steel in her tinder box to get a spark, the one little spark necessary to complete this great task she had undertaken.

Lonely and solemn it seemed up there in that vast, white, still world of ice and snow. Not a living creature stirred, not even the ever-active jack rabbit. Night settled down, and star by star the heavens above began to be illuminated. And now she had to stumble to her feet and stride up and down to get the blood once more circulating in her chilled veins. Then back at her discouraging task again, striking, striking, to get that vital spark.

At last it came. The tinder caught! Swiftly, but not too swiftly, she applied it to the dry brush she had arranged. It caught, in turn! A little tongue