Snow-blind

“This,” said the bland voice on the air, “is Station WBZ, Springfield, Massachusetts, broadcasting greetings from the home folks to the far-advanced outposts of the Royal Canadi...

When Kitchener Tearl left New York the city was basking in a spell of sultry, Indian Summer weather that had lingered into late October. As his Pullman traveled up the length of...

At the coldest and dreariest hour of the morning, in darkness and silence so intense that an early riser must feel the snow stinging his face to know that it was still snowing,...

The arm in its rough, icy sleeve clutched Kit tightly, and in that breath-taking moment he neither moved nor recovered the voice to speak. It was as though time had swept backwa...

The key was in Kitchener’s fingers, but at the moment he seemed to have no idea what its purpose might be. He bent above the sledge, gawking absurdly, utterly at loss to know wh...

With a plate of beans and bannock and bacon in his lap, and a tin mug of coffee gripped in his fist, Kitchener sat down by the camp fire and faced his brother with an unwonted l...

As though his doubts and difficulties were completely settled, Sergeant Tearl moved serenely to his sledge and began dumping blankets and duffle bags off into the snow. Kitchene...

It was like Jerry to vanish lightheartedly as though he were dropping off somewhere for a frivolous week-end, instead of undertaking a journey that would have appalled the most...

What change of plan or error of reckoning had brought Jerry into the Vermilion River country, when he should have been miles from here, heading due north, Kit at this moment was...

The soft stirring of footsteps jarred Kitchener out of his hideous reverie. Diane Durand had stolen past him in the darkness, and with reaching hands she leaned forward to look...

The police shack at _Saut Sauvage_ was buried in the snows of the remote wilderness. A fitful storm of sleet was lashing southward from the arctic barrens. It was December 24, a...

Kitchener faced the constables in his scarlet tunic with easy confidence, swaggering a little as Jerry might have done if he had stepped in to take command of the outpost at _Sa...

In the great North the lands of “big-sticks” and “little-sticks” and the treeless arctic prairies are not divided evenly by the lines of latitude. There are no definitely marked...

Kit stared goggle-eyed, first at the girl, at the strange, dumpy figures watching him from the half-light by the smoldering fireplace and again at the small, kicking, whimpering...

It was too late to stop the Esquimau’s talking. Kit stood dumbfounded, staring at him. Oogly either had gone stark crazy, or else he was a man devoid of fear. He had forced hims...

The promise of future punishment did not bother Oogly in the least. He lived happily in his immediate moments, and anything that happened to him at a later date was something no...

Kitchener recognized the snowshoe tracks with a shock of surprise. A spear is not a white man’s weapon, and he had supposed of course that one of the disgruntled Yellow Knives h...

That evening was to begin the harrowing days and weeks of peril and hardship through which Kitchener lived in an incredulous daze, like a sleeper in the throes of a bad dream.

In that tremendous moment Kit lost all sense of the cold that chilled and numbed him to the marrow of his bones. A tingling pulsebeat rang in his temples and throbbed in his fev...

In the moment of his betrayal Kit had the ghastly sensation of a man whose lungs had been suddenly pumped empty. His heart stopped, his brain went numb, the sense of living stop...

Kitchener felt a sickness and emptiness under his ribs. His comrade, one time a murderer, again had taken direful measures. He peered in consternation at the swarthy, round face...

Dazed as he was, half-blind, half-awake, Kit recognized his fate. Intuition was better than eyesight. This was no Indian. It was Hell Bent. He knew that. Everything was as good...

Kitchener lost his shotgun as a wave of giddiness swept over him. His hands went up, incredulous, feebly groping, to cling to a pair of big, fleshly shoulders, to feel the warmt...

Kitchener was on his feet with a stabbing breath, stumbling down the embankment. In his dim-sighted, watering eyes the erect figure on the ice loomed like a specter in an unbeli...

Kit gripped his eyes tightly shut, and then opened them again and tried to see. He dropped and buried his hands in the muffling, snow-crusted furs. “I heard it hit,” he said.

The two brothers were both over the bank, crawling in the scuffled snow. Kit scarcely noticed the buzzing bullets. He shook his head in petty irritation, as though he were annoy...

The curt voice and the rifle report cracked out together as a unity. Kit felt his brother’s shoulder yield with the kick-back of the heavy discharge. He grabbed the rifle and sh...

Kit was on his feet, grabbing for the shotgun with one hand and his mittens with the other. He was like a man demented. A dozen miles or more back to Great Owl Run, and night wa...

The quiet and drowsy warmth; the languid pleasure of stretching out weary legs; shadows that soothed his heavy, aching eyes; the cheery crackling of a hearth-fire and wavering o...