red the Colonel.

"It was your fault; you trod--"

"Stand back, damn you! or you'll get hurt."

The stick would have fallen on the Boy; he dodged it, calling
excitedly, "Come here, Nig! Here!"

"He's my dog, and I'll lamm him if I like. You--" The Colonel couldn't
see just where the Boy and the culprit were. Stumbling a few paces away
from the glare of the fire, he called out, "I'll kill that brute if he
snaps at me again!"

"Oh yes," the Boy's voice rang passionately out of the gloom, "I know
you want him killed."

The Colonel sat down heavily on the rolled-up bag. Presently the
bubbling of boiling snow-water roused him. He got up, divided the
biscuit, and poured the hot water over the fragments. Then he sat down
again, and waited for them to "swell like thunder." He couldn't see
where, a little way up the hillside, the Boy sat on a fallen tree with
Nig's head under his arm. The Boy felt pretty low in his mind. He sat
crouched together, with his head sunk almost to his knees. It was a
lonely kind of a world after all. Doing your level best didn't seem to
get you any forrader. What was the use? He started. Something warm,
caressing, touched his cold face just under one eye. Nig's tongue.

"Good old Nig! You feel lonesome, too?" He gathered the rough beast up
closer to him.

Just then the Colonel called, "Nig!"

"Sh! sh! Lie quiet!" whispered the Boy.

"Nig! Nig!"

"Good old boy! Stay here! He doesn't mean well by you. _Sh!_ quiet!
_Quiet_, I say!"

"Nig!" and the treacherous Colonel gave the peculiar whistle both men
used to call the dogs to supper. The dog struggled to get away, the
Boy's stiff fingers lost their grip, and "the best leader in the Yukon"
was running down the bank as hard as he could pelt, to the camp
fire--to the cooking-pot.

The Boy got up and floundered away in the opposite direction. He must
get out of hearing. He toiled on, listening for the expected
gunshot--hearing it, too, and the yawp of a wounded dog, in spite of a
mitten clapped at each ear.

"That's the kind of world it is! Do your level best, drag other fellas'
packs hundreds o' miles over the ice with a hungry belly and bloody
feet, and then--Poor old Nig!--'cause you're lame--poor old Nig!" With
a tightened throat and hot water in his eyes, he kept on repeating the
dog's name as he stumbled forward in the snow. "Nev' mind, old boy;
it's a lonely kind o' world, and the right trail's hard to find."
Suddenly he stood stil