ed
undulations of a sterile territory.

The dog train was moving at a reckless gait over the untracked,
hardening snow. The man Gouter was driving under imperative orders such
as he loved. Bull Sternford had told him when he left the shelter of
No. 10 Camp: "Get there! Get there quick! There's dogs and to spare at
all our camps, and I don't care a curse if you run the outfit to death."

To a man of Gouter's breed the order was sufficient. Half Eskimo, half
white man, he was a savage of the wild, born and bred to the fierce
northern trail, one of Labrador's hereditary fur hunters by sea and
land. Speed on the fiercest trail was the dream of his vanity. Relays of
dogs, such as he could never afford, and something accomplished which he
could tell of over the camp fire to his less fortunate brethren. So he
accepted the white man's order and drove accordingly.

Bull Sternford sat huddled in the back of the sled under the fur robes
which alone made life possible. His work at No. 10 Camp had left him
satisfied, but every nerve in his body was alert for the final coup he
contemplated. He was weary in mind as well as body. And in his heart he
knew that the need of his physical resources was not so very far off.
But he was beyond care. He had said he was crazy for sleep, but the
words gave no indication of his real condition. His eyes ached. His head
throbbed. There were moments, even, when the things he beheld, the
things he thought became distorted. But he knew that somewhere ahead a
ghostly outfit of strangers was pursuing its evil work against him, and
he meant to come up with it, and to wreak his vengeance in merciless,
summary fashion. His purpose had become an obsession in the long
sleepless days and nights he had endured.

It was war. It was bitter ruthless war on the barren hinterland of
Labrador, where civilisation was unknown. Mercy? Nature never designed
that terrible wilderness as a setting for mercy.

The dogs had been running for hours when Gouter's voice came sharply
back over his shoulder.

"Dog!" he cried, in the laconic fashion habitual to him.

Bull knelt up. His movement suggested the nervous strain he was
enduring. It was almost electrical.

"Where?" he demanded, peering out into the shining night over the man's
furry shoulder.

The half-breed raised a pointing whip ahead and to the south.

"Sure," he said. "I hear him."

Bull had heard nothing. Nothing but the hiss of the snow under their own