“Here’s hoping,” said Johnny. “For if it is not, our journey ends there.”
“And with its ending the fate of many human lives is sealed,” said Gordon Duncan solemnly. “It is strange that so much should depend upon so little. But we must do our part. We are enlisted in a great cause, the welfare of a vanishing race.”
As Johnny stood there looking away to the north, where even now it seemed he caught the gleam of a snow blanket, strange thoughts passed through his mind.
In a spirit almost of bravado, he had one morning slung his quiver of arrows over his back, bound his pack together, seized his bow and walked away into the wilderness.
“I meant to be away a month,” he told himself. “I would remain in the wilderness a month and receive no support save that which came from my bow and arrow. Well,” his face twisted into a doubtful smile, “it will be a month right enough, probably two, perhaps three. And the bow and arrow must support us, not one but three. There is no other way.”
“Two months! Perhaps three!” He said the words out loud. “Why, they’ll think me dead! I must go back. It isn’t treating them right. I must go back!” He was thinking of his own people.
“And yet—” As he closed his eyes to think he saw a group of little brown people, many groups, seated round the fast vanishing lights of crude tallow lamps. He saw the wan faces of mothers, the eyes of children that gleamed the bright gleam of death by starvation.
“One must always think of the highest good of the greatest number.” He quoted the words of a great teacher.
Two days later the girl and boy stood upon the crest of a high hill. Gordon Duncan was back some distance on the trail. Johnny would have gone back for his pack. But the aged Scotchman was still proud of his strength. This was the last climb for the day. Their camping place for the night was at the foot of the hill just before them.
Here there were no trees, only rocks. Their view was not obstructed. Far away behind hills that had turned to pure gold and mountains that appeared to smoke with the snow driven far and wide by the wind of their summits, the sun was setting. Far below was the river, a golden ribbon winding across a field of white satin.
So they stood there, the boy and the girl. Life, beautiful, glorious life, surged through their beings. It was inconceivable that anyone in all the world could be starving at this moment.