onel and the Boy were staking out this future stronghold
of trade and civilisation it came on to snow; but "Can't last this time
o' year," the Colonel consoled himself, and thanked God "the big,
unending snows are over for this season."

So they pushed on. But the Colonel seemed to have thanked God
prematurely. Down the snow drifted, soft, sticky, unending. The evening
was cloudy, and the snow increased the dimness overhead as well as the
heaviness under foot. They never knew just where it was in the hours
between dusk and dark that they lost the trail. The Boy believed it was
at a certain steep incline that Nig did his best to rush down.

"I thought he was at his tricks," said the Boy ruefully some hours
after. "I believe I'm an ass, and Nig is a gentleman and a scholar. He
knew perfectly what he was about."

"Reckon we'll camp, pardner."

"Reckon we might as well."

After unharnessing the dogs, the Boy stood an instant looking enviously
at them as he thawed out his stiff hands under his parki. Exhausted and
smoking hot, the dogs had curled down in the snow as contented-looking
as though on a hearth-rug before a fire, sheltering their sharp noses
with their tails.

"Wish I had a tail to shelter my face," said the Boy, as if a tail were
the one thing lacking to complete his bliss.

"You don't need any shelter _now_," answered the Colonel.

"Your face is gettin' well--" And he stopped suddenly, carried back to
those black days when he had vainly urged a face-guard. He unpacked
their few possessions, and watched the Boy take the axe and go off for
wood, stopping on his way, tired as he was, to pull Nig's pointed ears.
The odd thing about the Boy was that it was only with these Indian
curs--Nig in particular, who wasn't the Boy's dog at all--only with
these brute-beasts had he seemed to recover something of that buoyancy
and ridiculous youngness that had first drawn the Colonel to him on the
voyage up from 'Frisco. It was also clear that if the Boy now drew away
from his pardner ever so little, by so much did he draw nearer to the
dogs.

He might be too tired to answer the Colonel; he was seldom too tired to
talk nonsense to Nig, never too tired to say, "Well, old boy," or even
"Well, _pardner_," to the dumb brute. It was, perhaps, this that the
Colonel disliked most of all.

Whether the U.S. Agent at Nulato was justified or not in saying all the
region hereabouts was populous in the summer with Indian camps, t