The Colonel got up, went to the door, and let down the
flap. When he turned, the traveller and the dog were at his elbow. He
squared his big frame at the entrance, looking down at the two, tried
to speak, but the Boy broke in: "Don't let's get sentimental, Colonel;
just stand aside."

Never stirring, he found a voice to say, "I'm not askin' you to
stay"--the other turned and whistled, for Nig had retired again to the
seclusion of the gray blanket screen--"I only want to tell you
something before you go."

The Boy frowned a little, but rested his pack against the table in that
way in which the Klondyker learns to make a chair-back of his burden.

"You seem to think you've been tellin' me news," said the Colonel.
"When you said that about goin' on, the night before we got to Snow
Camp, I knew you simply meant you still intended to come out alive. I
had thrown up my hands--at least, I thought I had. The only difference
between us--I had given in and you hadn't."

The other shook his head. "There was a lot more in it than that."

"You meant to take the only means there were--to carry off the sled
that I couldn't pull any farther----" The Boy looked up quickly.
Something stern and truth-compelling in the dark face forced the
Colonel to add: "And along with the sled you meant to carry
off--the--the things that meant life to us."

"Just that----" The Boy knotted his brown fingers in Nig's hair as if
to keep tight hold of one friend in the wreck.

"We couldn't divide," the Colonel hurried on. "It was a case of
crawlin' on together, and, maybe, come out alive, or part and one die
sure."

The Boy nodded, tightening his lips.

"I knew well enough you'd fight for the off-chance. But"--the Colonel
came away from the door and stood in front of his companion--"so would
I. I hadn't really given up the struggle."

"You were past strugglin', and I would have left you sick----"

"You wouldn't have left me--if I'd had my gun."

The Boy remembered that he had more than suspected that at the time,
but the impression had by-and-by waxed dim. It was too utterly unlike
the Colonel--a thing dreamed. He had grown as ashamed of the dream as
of the thing he knew was true. The egotism of memory absorbed itself in
the part he himself had played--that other, an evil fancy born of an
evil time. And here was the Colonel saying it was true. The Boy dropped
his eyes. It had all happened in the night. There was something in the
naked truth