was very much mistaken, it looked as if the fury of the snowstorm had abated a bit. Perhaps she could find and follow the trail. It was a wide path; after all, it would be difficult to miss, even after fresh snowfall. And Papa and the other men were conscientious about reinforcing trail blazes on trees. If she bundled up well, and carried the baby next to her skin . . . and was very careful with her food and water . . . she thought she just might be able to do it.
What would Mama do, she asked herself, and looked at her meager supplies. One thing was certain, Mama would certainly not leave Anna’s good coat and boots here to warm a corpse. Jennilee grimaced at the necessity and effort of it, but she removed Anna’s outer garments and wrapped them around herself and the now mercifully sleeping babe. Anna’s boots were just slightly too big, but they were in better shape than her own, which had cracked weeks ago. When that was done, Jennilee did what she could to arrange Anna’s body in a position of dignity, and packed her supplies back up into the rucksack.
As she stepped out of the cave onto the trail, she began to sing her favorite verse of her favorite hymn.
Fear not, I am with thee
Oh be ye not dismayed
For I am thy God
And will still give thee aid . . .
All around, the snow filtered through the green-black needles of the conifers, and a hush settled over the world.
* * *
—
Jennilee might have had a chance, if she’d waited until morning. Not that she would have enjoyed spending the night with Anna’s corpse, but in the following day, she might have had the light she needed to see her way.
As it was, the falling snow blocked the moonlight and made it extremely hard to pick out the blaze marks carved into the trunks of the trees. Jennilee stumbled more than once, and abruptly realized that she was off the path and hopelessly lost. She stopped, heart racing, nose and lips numb with cold, and stepped toward a nearby pine. The pack with all of her supplies was heavy, and though she couldn’t very well put it down, she could lean it against the tree for a moment . . .
The snow shifted, slid, and the sudden sensation of falling gripped her belly as the lip of the cliff, hidden under the snow, collapsed under her weight. Jennilee wrapped her arms around the baby, cradling him to her chest as she started to tumble down the slope. Something struck her head and shoulder. She felt a sickening snap, and pain lanced up her right leg from her ankle. Her wind left her body all in a rush as she came to a stop flat on her back. For a moment, the edge of her vision went dark, and she was tempted to slide into the warm darkness of oblivion . . .
The baby squirmed against her chest. Somewhere far away, a wolf howled.
Jennilee clawed for her next breath, dragging it in by sheer force of will alone, and the darkness around her vision faded. Her head and shoulders stung with the force of hitting whatever she’d hit on the way down, but that was as nothing compared to the pain in her ankle. She forced herself up to a sitting position.
And for the second time, she had to focus on her breathing to force the blackness back. Her ankle was a ruin of rapidly spreading darkness, punctuated with one white spear of bone that poked out into the night.
As she looked at it, the real pain hit, and she had to roll back onto her side in order to avoid being sick all over the baby, still strapped to her chest. She emptied the contents of her stomach into the snow and wiped her mouth with one shaking hand while another wolf howl wound through the night.
“Heavenly Father,” she whispered, her voice shaking worse than her hand had been. She didn’t know it, but shock was starting to set in. “We are so thankful for all