Chapter Thirteen

I have never been this cold, such a bitter cold. Warmth from a crackling fire eased the chill and stopped the trembling of Belle’s body. Thankful for the last dry wood that popped and crackled, sending up sparks and shooting out tiny embers that soon died, reminded her of fireflies on a warm, summer night. Using caution, she added a new log, still wet from the snow outside.

When the fire did not go out, Belle knew her prayer had been answered. The blaze sputtered for a breathless moment with the addition of wet wood, then hissed as the flames licked off the remaining ice crystals and smoke surrounded the saturated log. It would take a while before the flames would dry out the log enough for it to burn well, but by then, the dugout should be warmer. She hoped the other wood brought in would be dry enough to feed the flickering flames, one piece at a time.

The blizzard came as a great surprise, and Belle remained shocked she had survived several hours out in it. She sat on a rag rug in front of the small fire and watched flames eagerly licking away at the drying wood, praying it would soon be warm enough in the dugout to take off her heavy wrap and crawl into bed. Her limbs were stiff, and her joints creaked with the slightest movement. Too cold to feel pain, she winced at the grating sound for fear her bones might break. Her mind seemed frozen, too.

Whatever possessed me to try to make my way out of this wilderness alone?

She recalled the snowflakes when they began to fall. Only a few, at first, they were quite lovely. Sheer white and fragile, they wafted down to her on gentle air currents and landed on her upturned palm. She stuck out her tongue to catch the flakes and reveled in their pure, clean taste.

Without warning, a wind howled from the northwest, and the sky stained dark, obsidian in its abrupt change. After the temperature plunged in a matter of minutes, Belle felt the icy sting on her face as the snowflakes diminished in size, becoming white dots mixed into a cruel, pelting sleet. She lowered her head and placed her hand on her forehead to shield her eyes from the freezing onslaught, but it didn’t help. Her teeth chattered so much it was impossible to lick her chapped lips for relief.

Bone-chilling wind almost blew her body down to the ground. She sought refuge behind a blackjack tree. Icy fingers and freezing gusts of wind snaked around the trunk and bit into her. Desperate, she began her frantic search for bigger tree trunks, each one larger than the last, until she realized how futile her search had become. No haven existed from the ruthless winter storm, huddled behind a tree, no matter how great a one she might find. She had to forego her earlier plan of trying to walk to one of the bigger bends of the river and wait for a ferry or trapper to help her into the settlement. Her only hope was to return to the dugout and weather the storm, so she searched for the trail that had brought her this far.

Fear clutched her heart when she realized she was lost. The swirling white mass enclosed her like a frozen cocoon. She chided herself for her tree-hopping foolishness.

“Now the fool must pay,” she whimpered through the uncontrollable chatter of her teeth. She fell to her knees on the hard earth, wet and slick with frozen crystals, and wanted to give up.

But a far stronger force prevailed, a desire for survival that had surfaced before when she felt doomed, a pioneer spirit tested and true. That enduring will to survive, inherent in her soul, came from her faith in God—as much a part of her as her numb extremities and her lips, chapped raw and lined with red cracks. She struggled to take a deep breath, letting it out in a long sigh, and prayed.

“Dear God, I beg the use of your beloved ear that you would hear my plea. I pray that you would look down on me, your unworthy soul, one who has tried to do things my own foolish way. I sought to leave this place. All alone, just one woman out here in the wilderness and faced with the harsh elements of nature.”

She tried to smooth the ache of her lips by rubbing the back of her hand across them, but her hand was too frigid to help. She cried, warm tears spilling out, but they froze before they could tumble the full length of her reddened cheeks.

“Dear God,” she continued, “I don’t understand why you’ve placed me in this predicament. It seems I’ve weathered more pain and sorrow in my short span of life than need be, but I am only a part of the whole. I know not what you require of me, but I cannot believe that I have ventured this far and endured this much, only to die in a blizzard. And what of my babe? It is only weeks until the birthing. Dearest God in Heaven, I beg of you to lead me where you would have me go, whether that is back to the dugout or to some new shelter, or into this white oblivion. And I pray that you would give me the common sense and the faith to follow as you lead. Amen.”

She remembered how her belief in God carried her to a break in the storm where she caught a glimpse of her home. She had traveled in a circle.

The fierce wind outside continued to howl, but the inside of the dugout was dry. Belle wondered how long she had sat in silence. Closing her eyes, she prayed, “Thank you, God, for leading me to safety. Amen.”

“Oh my,” she said, drawing in her breath. “I almost let the fire go out.” Stoking the fire with a hand-forged poker and thinking how stunning the red-hot coals were, she added more wood.

Feeling warmer than she had felt in a long time, she removed her outer wrap and brought a quilt to warm before the fire. She held it until the quilt was hot to the touch before she wrapped up in it and lay down on top of the bed, too exhausted to take off her clothing and dress for bed. She slept.