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Then he struck out through the deep snows and the twisting storm, knowing that there was no more than one chance in a thousand ahead of him, and that his one chance was to keep the wind at his back. * * * * * This was the beginning of the wonderful experience which Roscoe Cummins afterward described in his book "The First People and the Valley of Silent Men." He prepared another manuscript which for personal reasons was never published, the story of a dark-eyed girl of the First People--but this is to come. It has to do with the last tragic weeks of this winter of 1907, in which it was a toss-up between all things of flesh and blood in the Northland to see which would win--life or death--and in which a pair of dark eyes and a voice from the First People turned a sociologist into a possible Member of Parliament. * * * * * At the end of his first day's struggle Roscoe built himself a camp in a bit of scrub timber, which was not much more than brush. If he had been an older hand he would have observed that this bit of timber, and every tree and bush that he had passed since noon, was stripped and dead on the side that faced the north. It was a sign of the Great Barrens, and of the fierce storms that swept over them, destroying even the life of the trees. He cooked and ate his last food the following day, and went on. The small timber turned to scrub, and the scrub, in time, to vast snow wastes over which the storm swept mercilessly. All this day he looked for game, for a flutter of bird life; he chewed bark, and in the afternoon got a mouthful of Fox-bite, which made his throat swell until he could scarcely breathe. At night he made tea, but had nothing to eat. His hunger was acute and painful. It was torture the next day--the third--for the process of starvation is a rapid one in this country where only the fittest survive on four meals a day. He camped, built a small bush fire at night, and slept. He almost failed to rouse himself on the morning that followed, and when he staggered to his feet and felt the cutting sting of the storm still in his face, and heard the swishing wail of it over the Barren, he knew that at last the moment had come when he was standing face to face with the Almighty. For some strange reason he was not frightened at the situation. He found that even over the level spaces he could scarcely drag his snow shoes, but this had
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