ut his hand in
friendship. Yet he knew Corporal Cassidy was the deadliest menace the
earth held for him, a menace that had followed him like a shadow
through months and years--across the Barren Lands, along the rim of the
Arctic, down the Mackenzie, and back again--a menace that never tired,
and was never far behind in that ten thousand miles of wilderness they
had covered. Together in the bloodstirring game of One against One they
had faced the deadliest perils of the northland. They had gone hungry,
and cold, and more than once a thousand miles of nothingness lay behind
them, and death seemed preferable to anything that might lie ahead. Yet
in that aloneness, when companionship was more precious than anything
else on earth, neither had cried quits. The game had gone on, Cassidy
after his man--and Jolly Roger McKay fighting for his freedom.

As he headed his canoe north and east, Jolly Roger thought again of the
wager made weeks ago down at Cragg's Ridge, when he had turned the
tables on Cassidy and when Cassidy had made a solemn oath to resign
from the service if he failed to get his man in their next encounter.
He knew Cassidy would keep his word, and something told him that
tonight the last act in this tragedy of two had begun. He chuckled
again as he pictured the probable course of events on shore. Cassidy,
backed by the law, was demanding another canoe and a necessary outfit
of Slim Buck. Slim Buck, falling back on his tribal dignity, was
killing all possible time in making the preparations. When pursuit was
resumed Jolly Roger would have at least a mile the start of the
red-headed nemesis who hung to his trail. And Wollaston Lake, sixty
miles from end to end, and half as wide, offered plenty of room in
which to find safety.

The rising of the wind, which came from the south and west, was
pleasing to Jolly Roger, and he put less caution and more force into
the sweep of his paddle. For two hours he kept steadily eastward, and
then swung a little north, guiding himself by the stars. With the
breaking of dawn he made out the thickly wooded shore on the opposite
side of the lake from Slim Buck's camp, and before the sun was half an
hour high he had drawn up his canoe at the tip of a headland which gave
him a splendid view of the lake in all directions.

From this point, comfortably encamped in the cool shadows of a thick
clump of spruce, Jolly Roger and Peter watched all that day for a sign
of their enemy. As far a