The Rim of the Desert by Ada Woodruff Anderson
page 12 of 416 (02%)
page 12 of 416 (02%)
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"So have I." It was Lucky Banks who spoke. "So have I. And Weatherbee was
always ready to stand by a poor devil in a tight place. When the frost got me"--he held up a crippled and withered hand--"it was Dave Weatherbee who pulled me through. We were mushing it on the same stampede from Fairbanks to Ruby Creek, and he never had seen me before. It had come to the last day, and we were fighting it out in the teeth of a blizzard. You all know what that means. In the end we just kept the trail, following the hummocks. Sometimes it was a pack under a drift, or maybe a sled; and sometimes it was a hand reaching up through the snow, frozen stiff. Then it came my turn, and I lay down in my tracks. But Weatherbee stopped to work over me. He wouldn't go on. He said if I was determined to stay in that cemet'ry, I could count on his company. And when he got me on my feet, he just started 'Dixie,' nice and lively, and the next I knew he had me all wound up and set going again, good as new." His laugh, like the treble notes of the Arctic wind, gave an edge to the story. Presently Foster said: "That was Weatherbee; I never knew another such man. Always effacing himself when it came to a choice; always ready to share a good thing. Why, he made some of his friends rich, and yet in the end, after seven years of it, seven years of struggle of the worst kind, what did he have to show?" "Nothing, Foster; nothing but seven feet of earth up there on the edge of the wilderness." Tisdale's voice vibrated gently; an emotion like the surface stir of shaken depths crossed his face. "And a tract of unimproved desert down here in eastern Washington," he added. "And Mrs. Weatherbee," supplemented Feversham quickly. "You mustn't forget |
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