Page:Lost with Lieutenant Pike (1919).djvu/247

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feet had been frozen, among the men, with Stub's pair to be included.

He, and the lieutenant, Sergeant Meek and Terry Miller were the only ones to have escaped! John Sparks and young Tom Dougherty were the worst off. Their feet were solid white to their ankles. Hugh Menaugh and Jake Carter were badly off, too. The doctor did his best—everybody rubbed hard with snow, and several groaned from the pain; but there was nothing to eat and the thermometer dropped to more than eighteen degrees below zero or freezing.

With cold, hunger and aching feet it was a hard night. The lieutenant sent Sergeant Meek and Terry out early in the morning, to hunt in one direction; he and the doctor made ready to hunt in another.

"Do the best you can, lads," they encouraged, as they set forth. "We've all been in tight places before, and have come out safely. Wait now in patience, and you shall have the first meat that's killed."

It was another long day: a cold, bleak day for this open camp on the edge of the snow-laden pines and cedars, with the Great White Mountains overlooking, on the one hand, as far as eye might see, and the wide prairie bottoms stretching lone and lifeless on the other hand.

Stub's feet were swollen, puffy and tender, but