Page:Randall Parrish - The Red Mist.djvu/84



T WAS a hard tramp, the notch in the hills farther away than I had reckoned upon, and the ground between extremely difficult to travel over. At times an impenetrable tangle of brush turned me aside, and I was obliged to skirt numerous ravines which were impassable. Yet I held stubbornly to the course, seeing no other way out from the tangle, and stumbled steadily forward, my body aching from fatigue, and growing weak from hunger. It was considerably after the noon hour before I came upon the first sign of human life—an old logging road. Weed overgrown, and evidently long abandoned, it was nevertheless a most welcome discovery, and I limped on between its ruts, animated by new hope. The weather had turned colder, and there were whirling flakes of snow in the air. The direction I traveled compelled me to face the storm, and the wind whipped my face cruelly. An hour more of struggle brought me suddenly on a dismal shack of logs in the midst of a small clearing. I hesitated at the edge of 70