to die--very soon, M'seur."

"No, I'm not going to die, Jean. I'm going to see Meleese, and she's
going back into the South with me. And if you're real good you may have
the pleasure of driving us back to the Wekusko, Croisset, and you can be
my best man at the wedding. What do you say to that?"

"That you are mad--or a fool," retorted Jean, cracking his whip
viciously.

The dogs swung sharply from the trail, heading from their southerly
course into the northwest.

"We will save a day by doing this," explained Croisset at the other's
sharp word of inquiry. "We will hit the other trail twenty miles west of
here, while by following back to where they turned we would travel sixty
miles to reach the same point. That one chance in a hundred which you
have depends on this, M'seur. If the other sledge has passed--"

He shrugged his shoulders and started the dogs into a trot.

"Look here," cried Howland, running beside him. "Who is with this other
sledge?"

"Those who tried to kill you on the trail and at the coyote, M'seur," he
answered quickly.

Howland fell half a dozen paces behind. By the end of the first hour he
was compelled to rest frequently by taking to the sledge, and their
progress was much slower. Jean no longer made answer to his occasional
questions. Doggedly he swung on ahead to the right and a little behind
the team leader, and Howland could see that for some reason Croisset was
as anxious as himself to make the best time possible. His own
impatience increased as the morning lengthened. Jean's assurance that
the mysterious enemies who had twice attempted his life were only a
short distance behind them, or a short distance ahead, set a new and
desperate idea at work in his brain. He was confident that these men
from the Wekusko were his chief menace, and that with them once out of
the way, and with the Frenchman in his power, the fight which he was
carrying into the enemy's country would be half won. There would then be
no one to recognize him but Meleese.

His heart leaped with joyous hope, and he leaned forward on the sledge
to examine Croisset's empty gun. It was an automatic, and Croisset,
glancing back over the loping backs of the huskies, caught him smiling.
He ran more frequently now, and longer distances, and with the passing
of each mile his determination to strike a decisive blow increased. If
they reached the trail of Meleese and Jackpine before the crossing of
the second sledge he would l