foot where she stood in the shack door. "I couldn't
find----" But she recoiled as she saw me, against the light Marcia had
burning inside her own half-open door. "Oh, my God, _Nicky_!" she cried
in a voice that brought my soul alive, that fool's soul that had lost
her. She caught at me like a child, incredulously, wildly. "Oh, Nicky!"

There was no time to ask where she'd been, nor even of Macartney. I
think the unsuitable thing I said was "Marcia!" For I heard Marcia jump
and fall over Paulette's open trunk, before she was out of her door like
one of the wolves Macartney was so fond of. I didn't think she saw us,
but she did see Collins. The thing that cut her off was his rush out of
somewhere. I heard her scream with furious terror; heard Paulette's door
bang on her; and Collins was beside me with a rifle and some dunnage I
scarcely saw in the sudden dark of the passage after that banged door.

"Run," said he, through his teeth. "Gimme that stuff! Run!" he stuffed
my snowshoes under the arm that held the rifle. "No, not that way! This
way." He cut across the clearing in the opposite direction from the hole
that led to his underground den, and it was time. Half of Macartney's
men were tearing through the passage toward Marcia's screams, and the
rest were pouring out of the kitchen door. In the storm we could only
hear them. I was carrying Paulette like a baby, and with her head
against me I could not see her face. All I could see was swirling,
stinging snow in my eyes, and the sudden dark of the bush we brought up
in. I kept along the edge of it, circling the clearing, and all but fell
over the end of Collins's jutting rock. And this time I thanked God for
the furious snow; in ten minutes there would be no sign of our tracks
from the front door to the hold the rock shielded, and there was no
earthly chance of Macartney's men picking them up before we were safe.

It felt like years before the three of us were inside the curtain of
juniper, swarming up the smooth rock face, but Collins observed
contrarily that he'd never done it so quickly. He led the way up to the
passage angle where he had pinched out his light, put down the snowshoes
and the rifle, laid something else on the ground with remarkable
caution, and walked on some feet before he lit his candle.

"Better travel light and get home. Dunn and I'll come back presently and
bring up the dunnage," he observed as blandly as if the three of us had
been for an even