lled what he could remember of
his geography. Their course, if continued in the direction Bram was now
heading, would take them east of the Great Slave and the Great Bear,
and they would hit the Arctic somewhere between Melville Sound and the
Coppermine River. It was a good five hundred miles to the Eskimo
settlements there. Bram and his wolves could make it in ten days,
possibly in eight.

If his guess was correct, and Coronation Gulf was Bram's goal, he had
found at least one possible explanation for the tress of golden hair.

The girl or woman to whom it had belonged had come into the north
aboard a whaling ship. Probably she was the daughter or the wife of the
master. The ship had been lost in the ice--she had been saved by the
Eskimo--and she was among them now, with other white men. Philip
pictured it all vividly. It was unpleasant--horrible. The theory of
other white men being with her he was conscious of forcing upon himself
to offset the more reasonable supposition that, as in the case of the
golden snare, she belonged to Bram. He tried to free himself of that
thought, but it clung to him with a tenaciousness that oppressed him
with a grim and ugly foreboding. What a monstrous fate for a woman! He
shivered. For a few moments every instinct in his body fought to assure
him that such a thing could not happen. And yet he knew that it COULD
happen. A woman up there--with Bram! A woman with hair like spun
gold--and that giant half-mad enormity of a man!

He clenched his hands at the picture his excited brain was painting for
him. He wanted to jump from the sledge, overtake Bram, and demand the
truth from him. He was calm enough to realize the absurdity of such
action. Upon his own strategy depended now whatever answer he might
make to the message chance had sent to him through the golden snare.

For an hour he marked Bram's course by his compass. It was straight
north. Then Bram changed the manner of his progress by riding in a
standing position behind Philip. With his long whip he urged on the
pack until they were galloping over the frozen level of the plain at a
speed that must have exceeded ten miles an hour. A dozen times Philip
made efforts at conversation. Not a word did he get from Bram in reply.
Again and again the outlaw shouted to his wolves in Eskimo; he cracked
his whip, he flung his great arms over his head, and twice there rolled
out of his chest deep peals of strange laughter. They had been
travel