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Lemaire watched Larra’s heavily padded
figure slogging through the snow in front of
him. She was taking her turn
to break trail. It was not necessary
of course. As his employer, she
should not have been required to such heavy work, but she had insisted that
she participate fully in all aspects of the expedition, and that included
fetching firewood, cooking, and taking her turn in the
lead.
They had been on the march now for almost a week and so far they had been
lucky. The weather had been cold,
but sunny, with an absence of wind.
As a result they had made good
time. Much better time in fact
than Lemaire would have believed.
He had expected that after a few days he would be dragging Larra through
the bush, but she had surprised him with her tremendous
endurance. Not once had she called
a halt before he did.
Their relationship had become quite
chummy. Larra seemed interested
in a variety of topics. Lemaire
soon found than in many discussions he was soon out of his
depth. But his knowledge of northern
woodcraft was far superior to hers, and Larra had plied him with hundreds
of questions on the topic. It
was almost as if she was interested becoming a backwoodsman
herself.
Just ahead Larra had stopped.
Lemaire caught up with her and saw that in front of them was a
snow-covered lake. It appeared
to be only about a mile across and possibly three of four miles
long. The easiest way to deal
with it would be to walk straight across
it.
“Think the ice is thick enough?” asked
Larra. They had already crossed
a few lakes of smaller size without difficulty, but a larger expanse of water
might not be as solid.
“Should be OK,” replied
Lemaire. “The only real
danger would be if snow has covered the middle of the lake early and insulated
the ice enough to prevent it from
freezing. But if it is three
inches or so we should be alright with these
snowshoes.”
Larra nodded.
“Fine.
Let’s go. We should
make it before dusk if we keep up a good
pace.”
Lemaire prepared for a marathon. He
had learned what Larra meant by a good
pace. She seemed
inexhaustible. He would never
guessed that she had only been on snowshoes for
about seven days.
They were about halfway across when the wind suddenly picked
up. Almost immediately, they
were blinded by blowing snow.
Lemaire swore. He should
have known that their good luck could not
hold. The wind blew stinging
snow particles into their eyes, making it not only difficult to see, but
also painful to keep their eyes open.
Soon both Larra and Lemaire were blinking back
tears.
Lemaire knew that they should stop.
In this kind of weather, going on made very little sense, but there
was no shelter in the middle of the frozen lake, and no wood to make a
fire. Not only that, but it the
wind blew hard enough, it could actually exert pressure on the ice and cause
it to buckle where it was thinnest, and if that happened to be where he and
Larra were standing at the moment, they would be in
trouble.
Since there was no alternative, they pushed
on. Five minutes after the storm
struck there was an ominous crack.
The sound came from a few hundred feet to their right, but sounded
like a pistol shot. Then with
a series of icy explosions, the sound rushed toward
them.
Larra gave a startled cry as the ice gave way beneath
her. Lemaire cursed his stupidity
in not tethering them together. If
he had done so, he would have been able to pull Larra out of the icy
water.
“Dump your pack,” yelled
Lemaire. But Larra was well ahead
of him. She had slipped out of
the shoulder straps almost the second she felt the ice give way beneath
her.
She splashed in over her head. For
an instant, Larra was aware only of a cold so intense that it seemed to paralyze
her entire body. And then she
was fighting for her life, trying to heave herself up on the crumbling edge
of the broken ice. Time and again,
she almost made it out of the numbing water, only to have the ice give way
beneath her once more. Already,
she could feel the effects of the terrible
cold. Lemaire had told her that
in the event of a person falling through the ice, that survival was usually
measured only in minutes. She
had already used up most of her time.
Then something hit her in the face.
She heard Lemaire shouting at her.
“Grab it Larra! Grab
it!” Almost too chilled
to respond Larra recognized the object as the strap of Lemaire’s
pack. With a final desperate
effort she reached out and caught hold of
it. Slowly, but surely Lemaire
hauled her from the icy water onto solid
ice.
Lemaire hauled her too her feet.
“Come on,” he said, urgently, “we’ve got to get
you to a fire and quick. Otherwise
you’ll freeze to death.”
Larra had lost her snowshoes in the lake, but that did not matter
on the frozen lake. By good fortune,
the storm that had conspired against them had disappeared as quickly as it
had sprung up. They could now
clearly see the trees on the shoreline and lunged toward then as fast as
they could move.
Larra did not remember much of the mad dash for the
trees. She only remembered a
numbing cold spreading like death through her
body. Only her splendid physical
condition and the exertion of moving at top speed for the safety of the shore
kept her from giving up.
That and Lemaire’s steady grip on her
arm. He forced her to
move much faster than she would have
liked.
And then they were there. Larra
plopped down in the snow, worn out from her ordeal, but Lemaire was having
none of that. “Get up,”
he ordered. “You’ve
got to keep moving until I can get a fire
going. You’ll die if you
don’t.”
Reluctantly, Larra forced herself to walk in a circle while Lemaire went
about gathering wood for a fire.
She saw that he too had lost his pack, but from one of his pockets
he produced a box of matches.
Within minutes he had a small fire going and began to add larger branches
to the small blaze.
Larra placed herself as close to the fire as possible, trying to soak up
some of its warmth, while Lemaire went about gathering more
wood. He stopped and looked at
the shivering adventuress.
“
For a few seconds Larra continued to shake uncontrollably,
then Lemaire’s command sank
in. “Take off you clothes,
By now Larra was shivering so badly that she could hardly make her body obey
her. Fumbling with the ties and
buttons on her coat, she stripped the sodden garment
off. Underneath she was wearing
layers of wet clothing. One by
one she stripped them away, and as she did so, Lemaire took them from her
and set them aside to dry. All
the while, he tended the fire until he had built up a roaring
blaze.
Larra had trouble with the pants and
boots. By this time she was down
to a thin vest and her bra on top, but she was pretty far gone and lacked
the coordination needed to remove the remainder of her
clothing. Lemaire helped
her. Strangely, during the entire
ordeal, Larra felt no sense of shame or embarrassment, just a feeling that
she had to do as she was asked if she was to
survive. In any case, this was
certainly not the first time that she had undressed in front of a
man.
Lemaire took off his coat and wrapped it around
her. The heavy garment was large
enough, that she could almost curl up in
it. Suddenly Larra felt herself
getting very warm and sleepy. She
snapped her eyes open when a stinging blow slapped against her
face. “Stay awake,
Larra struggled to stay awake. By
now she could feel the heat of the fire, but Lemaire was not
satisfied. He placed still more
firewood on it and then went about heaping snow into a pile, using his gloved
hands. Larra had never seen him
do this before. The curiosity
generated about what he was up to helped to keep her
awake.
After about fifteen minutes, Lemaire had a compacted heap of snow about five
feet high and eight or nine feet across.
He took out a large hunting knife from his belt and began to carve
his way into the snowhill.
Suddenly, it became clear what he was
doing. Larra watched fascinated,
almost forgetting about the cold as she watched him construct a snow
house.
Then, Lemaire cut a few spruce boughs and placed them inside the snow house,
finishing by covering the boughs with some of his outer
clothing. “Alright,”
he said as last, pointing toward the doorway, “you get
in. I’ll
follow.”
Still wearing the coat, but nothing else, Larra clambered on hands and knees
into the tiny snow shelter. Lemaire
came right behind her. Inside,
it was dark, and it got darker still as Lemaire closed off the entrance with
snow. “We’ll have to
share my coat,” he said.
“It’s the only blanket we
have. By morning your clothes
should be dry. In the meantime,
I’ll let you wear one of my
sweaters.”
Larra accepted the sweater, and pulled it on over her naked
torso. It left her bare from
the middle of her backside down, so she scrunched up her legs to keep warm
and curled up on top of the spruce bough
bed. She was still shaking with
cold, and very hungry, but she found the inside
of the shelter much warmer than she would have imagined, as the heat of
Lemaire’s body and hers warmed it.
Lemaire noticed her shivering.
“It might be a good idea if we share the warmth of our bodies,”
he said. “You’re still
not recovered from your cold
bath.”
“Yes,” thought Larra, “I’ll bet you say that to every
woman who falls through the ice.”
But she knew he was right.
She was still quite chilled, and the warmth of the woodsman’s
body would be most welcoming.
Turning her back to him, she snuggled up to the curve of his
body. His warm, powerful arms
enfolded her. And then, completely
exhausted, Larra slept.
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