ng cold.

Long before daylight breakfast was eaten and preparations made for
travelling. Bob lashed his tent, cooking utensils, some traps and a
supply of provisions upon one of two toboggans that leaned against the
tilt outside. The other one was for Bill when he should need it. Dick
did up his blanket and a few provisions into a light pack, new slings
were adjusted to their snow-shoes and finally they were ready to
strike the trails.

The steel-gray dawn was just showing when Dick shouldered his pack,
took his axe and gun and shook hands with the boys.

"Good-bye Bob. Have a care o' nasty weather an' don't be losin'
yourself. I'll see you in a fortnight, Bill. Good-bye."

With long strides he turned down the river bend and in a few moments
the immeasurable white wilderness had swallowed him up.

The Big Hill trail was so called from a high, barren hill around whose
base it swung to follow a series of lakes leading to the northwest. Of
course as Bob had never been over the trail he did not know its
course, or where to find the traps that Douglas had left hanging in
the trees or lying on rocks the previous spring at the end of the
hunting season. Bill was to go with him to the farthest tilt on this
first journey to point these out to him and show him the way, then
leave him and hurry back to his own path, while Bob set the traps and
worked his way back to the junction tilt.

Shortly after Dick left them they started, Bill going ahead and
breaking the trail with his snow-shoes while Bob behind hauled the
loaded toboggan. On they pushed through trees heavily laden with snow,
out upon wide, frozen marshes, skirting lakes deep hidden beneath the
ice and snow which covered them like a great white blanket. The only
halts were for a moment now and again to note the location of traps as
they passed, which Bob with his keen memory of the woods could easily
find again when he returned to set them. Once they came upon some
ptarmigans, white as the snow upon which they stood. Their "grub bag"
received several of the birds, which were very tame and easily shot. A
hurried march brought them to the first tilt at noon, where they had
dinner, and that night, shortly after dark, they reached the second
tilt, thirty miles from their starting point. At midday on Thursday
they came to the end of the trail.

When they had had dinner of fried ptarmigan and tea, Bill announced:
"I'll be leavin' ye now, Bob. In two weeks from Friday we'