break a fresh trail himself,
upon snow-shoes, if he were to join Fat Joe and Garry in town for the
holiday, when a team of horses came toiling into view far across the
snow. It was Big Louie, sitting huge and stolid upon his load of
supplies, coming in a whole day late and cracking his long lash over
the glossy backs of the bays which the lash was never allowed to touch.
Behind him another sledge appeared in turn, with two figures on the
seat, but even at that distance they looked neither so huge nor so
stolidly reconciled to the bite of the wind. Fallon was driving;
Shayne was beating his arms across his chest. And the second team was
fagged and caked with frozen lather. Big Louie had been breaking trail
for twelve bitterly hard hours, but his animals were still far from
spent--not so tired in fact but what they could throw forward their
heads and nicker at the sight of warm stables. Big Louie loved horses
as he loved nothing else in his whole dull world. Sober he fed them
bits of sugar, with strange throat-sounds which they must have
understood, it seemed; drunk he threatened the life of any man who
might chance to maltreat them. That was the reason Steve had made Big
Louie his head-teamster only two weeks before.

From his window he watched the heavy loads crawl up to the store-house
door; he watched the drivers throw tarpaulins over the boxes and knew
that they were too weary to unload that night. And he was still there
at the frosted pane when the three men, Big Louie still plowing ahead,
hove into view again from the direction of the stables and came
straight toward his own shack. He opened the door and bade them enter
before they had had a chance to knock. The swagger in the shoulders of
two of them told him what to expect. Big Louie was only clumsy, as
usual.

"You did well to make it," he told the latter, kindly, as he always
addressed him. His nod to the others, who reeked of white whiskey, was
in part a question, in no wise a welcome. "Well?" he asked.

Apparently there had been a conference beforehand, for there was no
hesitancy on the part of Fallon, who had been ordained spokesman.

"We've come for our time," he growled.

Steve nodded gravely.

"I see," he murmured. "May I ask what's your grievance, this time."

They were the satellites of Harrigan. Because of that he had kept them
all where his eyes could find them at times. And even though their
arch-leader in discontent had not c