At first it was only a faint challenge to her courage. As the
minutes passed, however, her imagination ran riot, with five
thousand dollars to help them in their predicament. The challenge
grew. Multitudes of women down all the years had attempted wilder
ventures for those who were dear to them. Legion in number had been
those who set their hands and hearts to greater tasks, made more
improbable sacrifices, taken greater chances. Multitudes of them, too,
had won--on little else than the courage of ignorance and the
strength of desperation.
She had no fear of the great outdoors, for she had lived close to
the mountains from childhood and much of her old physical resiliency
and youthful daredeviltry remained. And the need was terrible; no
one anywhere in the valley, not even her own people, knew how
terrible.
Cora McBride, alone by her table in the kitchen, that night made her
decision.
She took the kitchen lamp and went upstairs. Lifting the top of a
leather trunk, she found her husband's revolver. With it was a belt
and holster, the former filled with cartridges. In the storeroom
over the back kitchen she unhooked Duncan's mackinaw and found her
own toboggan-cap. From a corner behind some fishing-rods she
salvaged a pair of summer-dried snowshoes; they had facilitated many
a previous hike in the winter woods with her man of a thousand
adventures.
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