drove his team into the teeth of the storm. The wind came
in gusts. Sometimes the gale was so stiff that the dogs could scarcely
crawl forward against it; again there were moments of comparative
stillness, followed by squalls that slapped the driver in the face like
the whipping of a loose sail on a catboat.

High drifts made the trail difficult. Not once but fifty times Macdonald
left the gee-pole to break a way through snow-waves for the sled. The
best he could get out of his dogs was three miles an hour, and he knew
that there was not another team or driver in the North could have done
so well.

It was close to noon when he reached a division of the road known as the
Fork. One trail ran down to the river and up it to the distant creeks.
The other led across the divide, struck the Yukon, and pointed a way to
the coast. White drifts had long since blotted out the track of the sled
that had preceded him. Had the fugitives gone up the river to the creeks
with intent to hole themselves up for the winter? Or was it their
purpose to cross the divide and go out over the ice to the coast?

The pursuer knew that Gid Holt was wise as a weasel. He could follow
blindfolded the paths that led to every creek in the gold-fields.
It might be taken as a certainty that he had not plunged into such a
desperate venture without having a plan well worked out beforehand.
Elliot had a high grade of intelligence. Would they try to reach the
coast and make their get-away to Seattle? Or would they dig themselves
in till the heavy snows were past and come back to civilization with the
story of a lucky strike to account for the gold they brought with them?
Neither gold-dust nor nuggets could be identified. There would be no way
of proving the story false. The only evidence against them would be that
they had left at Kusiak and this was merely of a corroborative kind.
There would be no chance of convicting them upon it.

But to strike for Seattle was to throw away all pretense of innocence.
Fugitives from justice, they would have to disappear from sight in order
to escape. The hunt for them would continue until at last they were
unearthed.

One fork of the road led to comparative safety; the other went by
devious windings to the penitentiary and perhaps the gallows. The
Scotchman put himself in the place of the men he was trailing. Given
the same conditions, he knew which path he would follow.

Macdonald took the trail that led down to the r