Page:Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp.djvu/173

Rh She could not shout into the teeth of the gale, and her cry was driven back into her own ears as weak as the mew of a kitten.

"Ho!" exclaimed Madge Steele. "They couldn't hear that if they were a stone's throw off. Let me give a warwhoop."

"We're all coming out!" cried the dissatisfied Lluella. "Let's all shout. Oh, girls! we've got to get back to the camp. We'll die here."

They scrambled out of the burrow. The wind smote full against them when once they were in the open. When they raised their voices in chorus it seemed as though there was an answering shout from a certain direction.

"Here we are! here we are! Father! Tom!" shrieked Helen, at the top of her voice.

"Don't go!" begged Ruth. "Let us stick by the tree. It will shelter us. Shout again."

But the majority of the girls were for setting off at once toward the sound they thought they had heard in the midst of the storm. Again and again they shouted. They clung to each other's hands as they ploughed through the drifts (the snowshoes were of no use to them now) but they did not hear the answering cry again.

At last they stopped, all sorely frightened, Lluella in tears. "What will we do now?" gasped Belle.

"We'd better go back to that tree. We were