Forty miles! She clutched her hands at her breast, and stood breathing like one who had been beaten, her back to the wind.

The baby was quiet.

Joan went back and peered down under the furs, and what she saw there spurred her on again almost fiercely.

Twice she stumbled to her knees in the drifts during the next quarter of a mile.
After that there was a stretch of wind-swept ice, and Kazan pulled the sledge alone.

Joan walked at his side.