y's rest for their feet and
moccasins all around," Smoke counseled. "If you get a chance at any low
divide, take a peep over at the country beyond. We're likely to strike
open rolling country any time now. That's what La Perle told us to look
for."

"Huh! By his own story, it was ten years ago that La Perle come through
this section, an' he was that loco from hunger he couldn't know what he
did see. Remember what he said of whoppin' big flags floatin' from the
tops of the mountains? That shows how loco HE was. An' he said himself
he never seen any white Indians--that was Anton's yarn. An', besides,
Anton kicked the bucket two years before you an' me come to Alaska. But
I'll take a look to-morrow. An' mebbe I might pick up a moose. What d'
you say we turn in?"

Smoke spent the morning in camp, sewing dog-moccasins and repairing
harnesses. At noon he cooked a meal for two, ate his share, and began
to look for Shorty's return. An hour later he strapped on his snow-shoes
and went out on his partner's trail. The way led up the bed of
the stream, through a narrow gorge that widened suddenly into a
moose-pasture. But no moose had been there since the first snow of the
preceding fall. The tracks of Shorty's snow-shoes crossed the pasture
and went up the easy slope of a low divide. At the crest Smoke halted.
The tracks continued down the other slope. The first spruce-trees, in
the creek bed, were a mile away, and it was evident that Shorty had
passed through them and gone on. Smoke looked at his watch, remembered
the oncoming darkness, the dogs, and the camp, and reluctantly decided
against going farther. But before he retraced his steps he paused for
a long look. All the eastern sky-line was saw-toothed by the snowy
backbone of the Rockies. The whole mountain system, range upon range,
seemed to trend to the northwest, cutting athwart the course to the
open country reported by La Perle. The effect was as if the mountains
conspired to thrust back the traveler toward the west and the Yukon.
Smoke wondered how many men in the past, approaching as he had
approached, had been turned aside by that forbidding aspect. La Perle
had not been turned aside, but, then, La Perle had crossed over from the
eastern slope of the Rockies.

Until midnight Smoke maintained a huge fire for the guidance of Shorty.
And in the morning, waiting with camp broken and dogs harnessed for the
first break of light, Smoke took up the pursuit. In the narrow p