ile,"
Daylight said next.

"I'll go," said Finn.

They considered a while longer.

"But how are we going to feed the other team and three men till he gets
back?" Hines demanded.

"Only one thing to it," was Elijah's contribution. "You'll have to
take the other team, Joe, and pull up the Stewart till you find them
Indians. Then you come back with a load of meat. You'll get here long
before Henry can make it from Sixty Mile, and while you're gone
there'll only be Daylight and me to feed, and we'll feed good and
small."

"And in the morning we-all'll pull for the cache and pan snow to find
what grub we've got." Daylight lay back, as he spoke, and rolled in
his robe to sleep, then added: "Better turn in for an early start. Two
of you can take the dogs down. Elijah and me'll skin out on both sides
and see if we-all can scare up a moose on the way down."

CHAPTER VIII

No time was lost. Hines and Finn, with the dogs, already on short
rations, were two days in pulling down. At noon of the third day
Elijah arrived, reporting no moose sign. That night Daylight came in
with a similar report. As fast as they arrived, the men had started
careful panning of the snow all around the cache. It was a large task,
for they found stray beans fully a hundred yards from the cache. One
more day all the men toiled. The result was pitiful, and the four
showed their caliber in the division of the few pounds of food that had
been recovered. Little as it was, the lion's share was left with
Daylight and Elijah. The men who pulled on with the dogs, one up the
Stewart and one down, would come more quickly to grub. The two who
remained would have to last out till the others returned. Furthermore,
while the dogs, on several ounces each of beans a day, would travel
slowly, nevertheless, the men who travelled with them, on a pinch,
would have the dogs themselves to eat. But the men who remained, when
the pinch came, would have no dogs. It was for this reason that
Daylight and Elijah took the more desperate chance. They could not do
less, nor did they care to do less. The days passed, and the winter
began merging imperceptibly into the Northland spring that comes like a
thunderbolt of suddenness. It was the spring of 1896 that was
preparing. Each day the sun rose farther east of south, remained
longer in the sky, and set farther to the west. March ended and April
began, and Daylight and Elijah, lean and hungry, wondered wh