The Red River Half-Breed: A Tale of the Wild North-West
with their experience, when she announced her resolve to accompany her father.

When dawn came, her fears were harrowing. Around and even over her head in her ambush, the ravenous foe scampered and scuttled like the beasts of rapine and carnage they were. They probed the snow and every cleft of the rocks to secure the hairy trophies from the hapless crews of the snow ships. Not one could have been found alive, for at each unearthing, Ulla judged by the tone that the finders experienced disappointment. On the other hand, the spoil of the sledges was embarrassing in its quantity for the band.

She dared not peep out; she dreaded that the feeble blue thread of condensed breath from her nook would betray her. She did not see, therefore, that, unable to bear away more than a tenth of the plunder, the rest was hidden under the precipice.

At last came the time when hunger drove her forth. The desolation and stillness in this hollow were overwhelming. The snow was trampled and pulled about by the searchers. Dead bodies, gashed and unlimbed, strewed the late virgin white expanse, amid the broken boxes and disrupted cases.

Ulla shuddered to tread among these hideous corpses, where it was impossible for her to recognise her late companions. To find her father was a vain idea. She took a smashed tin of meat and some chocolate, and ate ferociously.

On high, the stars glittered with a cold brightness, which revealed they saw her misery and grief, but offered no consolation. On the edge of the precipice, gorged wolves, that had devoured the voyageurs up there, were lazily contemplating the solitary form with motion in the wreck, and among the human remains of the expedition so gay and gallant fifty hours before.

Her ungovernable appetite appeased, and her thirst far from quenched by sucking a snowball, she mournfully reflected on her plight.

A child of luxury, it was more a nightmare than reality that she could be here, in the Northwestern desert, the great mass of the Rocky Mountains looming up beyond, impressive, insurmountable, and on the other three points, a thousand miles of snow! And she a young girl, alone!

A company of sappers and miners would have had a week's work in the ironbound soil under the snow to inter this mangled débris of mortality. For her to attempt the pious duty was a mockery.

Nevertheless, when the moon rose, a 
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