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That Winter he joined a Frenchman, and until February they trapped along the edges of the lower fingers of the Barrens. He came to think a great deal of Picard, his comrade. But he revealed nothing of his secret to him, or of the new desire that was growing in him. And as the Winter lengthened this desire became a deep and abiding yearning. It was with him night and day.
I see my chance an' before that prayer ended I had got the fugitives under some hay in my wagon and started off with them on my way to Livingston County. I could hear the prayin' until I got over the hill into Canaan barrens. At sundown I left them in good hands thirty miles up the road."
The overseer was very angry and told him to strip and be flogged; he being slow, was told if he did not instantly strip off his jacket, he, the overseer, would whip it off which he did in shreds, whipping him cruelly. "The man ran into the barrens and it was about a month before they caught him. He was newly starved, and at last stole a turkey; then another, and was caught.
Still less the prospect, on the one side two miles of arid waste to the stunted, far-spaced pines in the distance, known as the "Barrens;" on the other an apparently limitless level with darker patches of sage brush, like the scars of burnt-out fires. Dick Boyle approached the motionless Indian as a possible relief. "YOU don't seem to care much if school keeps or not, do you, Lo?"
He was travelling roads no Christian had ever trod, on a wild-goose errand, while his comrades were winning fame in the battle-front. Alas! that a bright sword should rust in these barrens! But with the uplands peace crept into his soul and some of the mystery of his journey. It was a brave venture, whether it failed or no, for he had already gone beyond the pale even of men's dreams.
Indeed I fully expected it would be absolutely necessary for us to do so, through a region which, from Flinders' description as seen from sea, and from his having named three different hills in it Mount Barrens, we should find neither very practicable nor fertile.
Here in the meadow I was exposed to the full force of the sweeping gale, and here I realized for the first time that this was the great storm of the winter, one of the supreme passages of the year, and one of the glorious physical fights of a lifetime. On a prairie, or in the treeless barrens and tundras of the vast, frozen North, a fight like this could have but one end.
The wind had died away with the setting of the sun, and the night was very still. Across the barrens a faint tinge of green appeared upon the horizon, spreading outward like a great fan across the sky, changing from green to violet and from violet to pink, while great flaming streamers spread upward to the zenith, pulsating as if with life.
To be caught out on the barrens meant to be lost; and to be lost here without fire and shelter meant death, swift and sure. So they ran on, hoping to strike the woods before the blizzard burst upon them. They were scarcely half-way to shelter when the white flakes began to whirl around them.
This was just the beginning of the forest; clear into the shadow of the Arctic Circle, where the woodlands gave way to the Weary wastes of barrens, there was no break, no tilled fields or fisher's villages, only an occasional Indian encampment which not even a wolf, running through the night, might find. His supply of food would quickly be exhausted, fatigue would break his valiant spirit.
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