Page:Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp.djvu/163

Rh Mr. Cameron was very pale and his lips trembled when he stood before the three woodsmen in the lodge kitchen.

"You mean that to try to seek for the girls now is impossible, Jerry?" he asked.

"What do you think about it yourself, sir?" returned the guide. "You have been out in it."

"I—I don't expect you to attempt what I cannot do myself"

"If mortal man could live in it, we'd make the attempt without ye, sir," declared Long Jerry, warmly. "But neither dogs nor men could find their way in this smother. It looks like it had set in for a big blizzard. You don't know jest what that means up here in the backwoods. Logging camps will be snowed under and mules, horses and oxen will have to be shot to save them from starvation. The hunting will be mighty poor next fall, for the deer and other varmints will starve to death, too.

"If poor people in the woods don't starve after this storm, it will be lucky. Why, the last big one we had the Octohac Company had a gang of fifty men shoveling out a road for twenty miles so as to get tote teams through with provisions for their camp. And then men had to drag the tote teams instead of horses, the critters were so near starved. Ain't that so, Ben?"

"Surest thing you know," agreed one of the