rotected from
the blistering light.

Towards the afternoon, Koot knew that something had gone wrong. Some
distance ahead, he saw a black object against the snow. On the unbroken
white, it looked almost as big as a barrel and seemed at least a mile
away. Lowering his eyes, Koot let out a spurt of speed, and the next
thing he knew he had tripped his snow-shoe and tumbled. Scrambling up,
he saw that a stick had caught the web of his snow-shoe; but where was
the barrel for which he had been steering? There wasn't any barrel at
all--the barrel was this black stick which hadn't been fifty yards away.
Koot rubbed his eyes and noticed that black and red and purple patches
were all over the snow. The drifts were heaving and racing after each
other like waves on an angry sea. He did not go much farther that day;
for every glint of snow scorched his eyes like a hot iron. He camped at
the first bluff and made a poultice of cold tea leaves which he laid
across his blistered face for the night.

Any one who knows the tortures of snow-blindness will understand why
Koot did not sleep that night. It was a long night to the trapper, such
a very long night that the sun had been up for two hours before its heat
burned through the layers of his capote into his eyes and roused him
from sheer pain. Then he sprang up, put up an ungantled hand and knew
from the heat of the sun that it was broad day. But when he took the
bandage off his eyes, all he saw was a black curtain one moment,
rockets and wheels and dancing patches of purple fire the next.

Koot was no fool to become panicky and feeble from sudden peril. He knew
that he was snow-blind on a pathless prairie at least two days away from
the fort. To wait until the snow-blindness had healed would risk the few
provisions that he had and perhaps expose him to a blizzard. The one
rule of the trapper's life is to go ahead, let the going cost what it
may; and drawing his capote over his face, Koot went on.

The heat of the sun told him the directions; and when the sun went down,
the crooning west wind, bringing thaw and snow-crust, was his compass.
And when the wind fell, the tufts of shrub-growth sticking through the
snow pointed to the warm south. Now he tied himself to his dog; and when
he camped beside trees into which he had gone full crash before he knew
they were there, he laid his gun beside the dog and sleigh. Going out
the full length of his cord, he whittled the chips for his fire a