In a little valley, beside a frozen stream and under beneficent spruce trees, he built a fire four days later.Somewhere in that white anarchy he left behind him, was Surprise Lake--somewhere, he knew not where; for a hundred hours of driftage and struggle through blinding driving snow, had concealed his course from him, and he knew not in what direction lay BEHIND.It was as if he had just emerged from a nightmare.He was not sure that four days or a week had passed.He had slept with the dogs, fought across a forgotten number of shallow divides, followed the windings of weird canyons that ended in pockets, and twice had managed to make a fire and thaw out frozen moose-meat.And here he was, well- fed and well-camped.The storm had passed, and it had turned clear and cold.The lay of the land had again become rational.The creek he was on was natural in appearance, and trended as it should toward the southwest.But Surprise Lake was as lost to him as it had been to all its seekers in the past.
Half a day's journey down the creek brought him to the valley of a larger stream which he decided was the McQuestion.Here he shot a moose, and once again each wolf-dog carried a full fifty-pound pack of meat.As he turned down the McQuestion, he came upon a sled- trail.The late snows had drifted over, but underneath, it was well-packed by travel.His conclusion was that two camps had been established on the McQuestion, and that this was the connecting trail.Evidently, Two Cabins had been found and it was the lower camp, so he headed down the stream.
It was forty below zero when he camped that night, and he fell asleep wondering who were the men who had rediscovered the Two Cabins, and if he would fetch it next day.At the first hint of dawn he was under way, easily following the half-obliterated trail and packing the recent snow with his webbed shoes so that the dogs should not wallow.
And then it came, the unexpected, leaping out upon him on a bend of the river.It seemed to him that he heard and felt simultaneously.The crack of the rifle came from the right, and the bullet, tearing through and across the shoulders of his drill parka and woollen coat, pivoted him half around with the shock of its impact.He staggered on his twisted snow- shoes to recover balance, and heard a second crack of the rifle.This time it was a clean miss.He did not wait for more, but plunged across the snow for the sheltering trees of the bank a hundred feet away.Again and again the rifle cracked, and he was unpleasantly aware of a trickle of warm moisture down his back.
He climbed the bank, the dogs floundering behind, and dodged in among the trees and brush.Slipping out of his snow-shoes, he wallowed forward at full length and peered cautiously out.Nothing was to be seen.Whoever had shot at him was lying quiet among the trees of the opposite bank.
"If something doesn't happen pretty soon," he muttered at the end of half an hour, "I'll have to sneak away and build a fire or freeze my feet.Yellow Face, what'd you do, lying in the frost with circulation getting slack and a man trying to plug you?"He crawled back a few yards, packed down the snow, danced a jig that sent the blood back into his feet, and managed to endure another half hour.Then, from down the river, he heard the unmistakable jingle of dog-bells.Peering out, he saw a sled round the bend.Only one man was with it, straining at the gee-pole and urging the dogs along.The effect on Smoke was one of shock, for it was the first human he had seen since he parted from Shorty three weeks before.His next thought was of the potential murderer concealed on the opposite bank.
Without exposing himself, Smoke whistled warningly.The man did not hear, and came on rapidly.Again, and more sharply, Smoke whistled.The man whoa'd his dogs, stopped, and had turned and faced Smoke when the rifle cracked.The instant afterwards, Smoke fired into the wood in the direction of the sound.The man on the river had been struck by the first shot.The shock of the high velocity bullet staggered him.He stumbled awkwardly to the sled, half- falling, and pulled a rifle out fromunder the lashings.As he strove to raise it to his shoulder, he crumpled at the waist and sank down slowly to a sitting posture on the sled.Then, abruptly, as the gun went off aimlessly, he pitched backward and across a corner of the sled-load, so that Smoke could see only his legs and stomach.
