Having completed his dirge of the night, Tico, nose to the snow, went trotting away.
“He’s on the trail of the great banshee!” The girl gripped her breast to still her heart’s wild beating. “Sha—shall I follow? Dare I?”
She answered her own question by again taking up the trail.
A quarter mile farther on, she came to that which made her start and stare. A little to one side of the trail, a dark spot stood out against the whiteness of the earth’s snow blanket.
“A—a mitten,” she said, picking it up. “It, why it—” again she strove in vain to still her heart. “It’s Johnny’s!”
Who can say what wild thoughts surged through her breast as she stood there in the snow beneath the starry heavens, alone in a vast hostile wilderness?
Whatever they may have been, they at last urged her on at redoubled speed. So, half walking, half running, she came at last to the brink of the river. And there catastrophe befell her.
At this point on his long journey the hunchback had descended a sloping bank of snow to travel for a time upon the river’s ice which was still frozen to the bank. Since his passing, the ice had broken away. Many yards of his trail had gone floating downstream.
Knowing nothing of this, the girl tried in vain to discover the way he had gone.
“He can’t have taken to the river,” she told herself. “Still, there may have been a boat. There—”
In leaning over the bank for a better look, she loosened the undermined mass of snow and together they plunged into the racing river.
“It’s the end,” she told herself in despair as she felt the sting of icy water. “No one can live in such a torrent.”
But what was this? Something touched her cheek. It was Tico. Seeing his mistress adrift, he had plunged boldly in, determined to live or die with her.
“Good old Tico!” Her voice choked. “We’ll die fighting.”
At that she put forth all her strength in an effort to regain the bank.
“But what’s the use?” she thought. “It’s only a steep bank of snow. No one could scale it.”
With that thought, hoping against hope that something might come her way, a log, a snag, an overhanging tree, she gave herself over to drifting and quiet strokes that kept her afloat.
Much sooner than Johnny expected, the hunchback awoke. Perhaps the pangs of hunger were making themselves felt. Be that as it may, the night was not half gone when, each armed with a stout bow and a quiver of arrows, they stole out into the vivid moonlight.