a white fury he seized the wretch, dragged
him from the room, and flung him into his bunk, then stood guard over
him most of the night.

It was during the quieter hours when the place rumbled to snores that
Folsom yielded to his desire to write his wife, a desire which had
been growing steadily. He was disgusted with Harkness, disappointed
with the whole Kobuk enterprise, and in a peculiarly softened mood,
therefore, he wrote with no attempt to conceal his yearning, homesick
tenderness.

But when he read the letter in the morning it struck him as weak and
sentimental, just the sort of letter he would regret having written if
it should transpire that Lois did not altogether share his feelings.
So he tore it up.

Those were the days of faint trails and poor accommodations; as yet
the road to the Arctic was little traveled and imperfectly known, so
Harkness acted as guide. He had bragged that he knew every inch of the
country, but he soon proved that his ideas of distance were vague and
faulty--a serious shortcoming in a land with no food, no shelter, and
no firewood except green willows in the gulch-bottoms. Folsom began to
fear that the fellow's sense of direction was equally bad, and taxed
him with it, but Harkness scoffed at the idea.

Leaving the last road-house behind them, they came into a hilly
section of great white domes, high hog-backs, and ramifying creeks,
each one exactly like its neighbor; two days' travel through this,
according to Harkness, should have brought them to the Imnachuck,
where there was food and shelter again. But when they pitched camp for
the second night Folsom felt compelled to remind his partner that they
were behind their schedule, and that this was the last of their grub.

"Are you sure you're going right?" he inquired.

"Sure? Of course I'm sure. D'you think I'm lost?"

Folsom fed some twisted willow-tops into the sheet-iron stove. "I
wouldn't recommend you as a pathfinder," said he. "You said we'd sleep
out one night. This is two, and to-morrow we'll walk hungry."

"Well, don't blame me!" challenged the other. "I'm going slow on your
account."

Now nothing could have galled Folsom more than a reflection upon
his ability to travel. His lips whitened, he was upon the point of
speaking his mind, but managed to check himself in time. Harkness's
personality rasped him to the raw, and he had for days struggled
against an utterly absurd but insistent desire to seize the little
cox