Caroline B. Cooney Quote

We will freeze to death, thought Mercy. Why go to the trouble of carrying a hundred pairs of moccasins when they won’t make a fire?Her Indian knelt and, with his bare hands, scooped out a hole in a snowbank. She expected him to store his plunder in the cavity. He had to make a lot of hand motions before she understood that this was her shelter for the night.Not a house, nor a bed, nor even a stable. A hole in the snow.Mercy wanted to raise her head to the skies and howl like a dog. But she wanted to survive. There must be no more bodies along this terrible trail. First, may I look for my brothers? She held up four fingers.No, said the Indian, and motioned her into the cave, tucking Daniel in after her.Mercy would have felt much better if she could have rested her eyes on Tommy and John and Sam and Benny.From her hole she watched the others settle in for the night. Eben’s Indian collected the older boys: Eben, the oldest Kellogg boy, the two Sheldon boys and Joe Alexander, who was in his twenties but looked very young. They were pinioned to the ground a dozen yards from where Mercy was curled.For Eben, however, his Indian made a cradle of spruce boughs. He wrapped a leather rope around Eben’s wrists and linked the cord to his own. If Eben moved, his captor would know it.The rest were made to lie on open snow. There was nothing between them and the weather. No walls, no roof, no parent.