Griswold shook his head.
"That 'every-man-for-himself' talk aint the law we know, Toy."
The Chinaman reiterated, in monotone: "You go, I think."
"You heard what I said."
"You take my watch, give him Chiny Charley. He savvy my grandson, the little Sun Loon. Tell Chiny Charley he write the bank in Spokane for send money to Chiny to pay on lice lanch. Tell Chiny Charley--he savvy all. I stay here. You come back--all light. You no come back--all light. I no care. You go now." He lay down. The matter was quite settled in Toy's mind.
While Sprudell stamped around trying to get feeling into his numb feet and making his preparations to leave, Uncle Bill lay still. He knew that Toy was sincere in urging him to go, and finally he said: "I'll take you at your word, Toy; I'll make the break. If there's nobody in the cabin, I don't believe I'll have the strength to waller back alone; but if there is, we'll get some grub together and come as soon as we can start. I'll do my best."
The glimmer of a smile lighted old Toy's broad, Mongolian face when Griswold was ready to go, and he laid his chiefest treasure in Griswold's hand.
"For the little Sun Loon." His oblique, black eyes softened with affectionate pride. "Plitty fine kid, Bill, hiyu wawa."
"For the little Sun Loon," repeated Uncle Bill gravely. "And hang on as long as you can." Then he shook hands with Toy and divided the matches.
The old Chinaman turned his face to the wall of the tent and lay quite still as the two went out and tied the flap securely behind them.
It did not take Sprudell long to realize that Uncle Bill was correct in his assertion that he would have been lost alone in fifteen yards. He would have been lost in less than that, or as soon as the full force of the howling storm had struck him and the wind-driven snow shut out the tent. He had not gone far before he wished that he had done as Uncle Bill had told him and wrapped his feet in "Californy socks." The strips of gunny sacking which he had refused because they looked bunglesome he could see now were an immense protection against cold and wet. Sprudell almost admitted, as he felt the dampness beginning to penetrate his waterproof field boots, that there might still be some things he could learn.
He gasped like a person taking a long, hard dive into icy water when they plunged into the swirling world which shut out the tent they had called home. And the wind that took his breath had a curious, piercing quality that hurt, as Uncle Bill had said, like breathing darning needles. "The White Death!" Literally it was that. Panting and quickly exhausted, as he "wallered snow to his neck," T. Victor Sprudell began seriously to doubt if he could make it.