fire in the morning. If you
put a big log on to-night you'll have glowing coals in the morning. It
will be cold getting up, and I wish I could be here to build your fire.
But I don't think I can."

She gave him a smile and was startled sober in the middle of it. All at
once she saw that the man was pale. He had, then, found a clew of real
importance. "Go ahead, of course," she told him. "We'll fix some lunch
for you right away."

He took a piece of dried moose meat, a can of beans and another of
marmalade, and these, with a number of dried biscuits, would comprise
his lunch. "Be careful of yourself," he told her at parting. "If I
don't get back to-morrow, don't worry. And pray for me."

She told him she would, but she did not guess the context of the prayer
his own heart asked. His prayer was for failure, rather than success.

Following his own tracks, he went directly back to the mysterious
snowshoe trail. He followed swiftly down it, anxious to know his fate
at the first possible instant. He saw that the trail was fresh, made
that morning; he had every reason to think that he could overtake the
man who had made it within a few hours.

He was not camped on the Yuga,--whoever had come mushing through the
silences that morning. From the river to that point where he had found
the tracks was too great a distance for any musher to cover in the few
hours since dawn. There was nothing to believe but that the stranger's
camp lay within a few miles of his own. He decided, from his frequent
stops, that the man had been hunting; there was nothing to indicate
that he was following a trap line. The frequent tracks in the snow,
however, indicated an unusually good tracking country. He wondered if
strangers--Indians, most likely--had come to poach on his domain.

He did not catch up with the traveler in the snow. The man had mushed
swiftly. But shortly after the noon hour his keen eyes saw a wisp of
smoke drifting through the trees, and his heart leaped in his breast.
He pushed on, emerging all at once upon a human habitation.

It was a lean-to, rather than a cabin. Some logs had been used in its
construction, but mostly its walls were merely frames, thatched heavily
with spruce boughs. A fire smoldered in front. And his heart leaped
with indescribable relief when he saw that neither of the two men that
were squatted in the lean-to mouth was the stranger that had passed his
camp six years before.

Bill