had been bitten black in an hour when he had no time to give thought to it. Abraham's teeth had met once in the fleshy part of his hand, and the incoming frost threatened a long, painful healing. His nerves were strong as a man's need be, but the tension was unslackening; food ran short, and bad weather made trail-breaking needful for three ghastly days on end. Kennedy worked well and uncomplainingly; but his mental and physical fibres were not yet set, and the burden of all fell on Dick.
And then came the last night out from Grey Wolf, in an empty freighter's shack by the river. For fifty hours Abraham had refused food. He lay weak as a child by the fire, moaning until Dick loosed the rawhide that had wound him about through his last fit of violence, and left him at ease with the handcuffs only. He fell asleep then, and Dick looked with sunken eyes on Kennedy.
"I must sleep right now, if we all die for it," he said. "You can have Okimow help you; but I believe he's fagged out. Give me two hours, and then call me."
Within two hours another than Kennedy very nearly called Dick, when a gasping smother of human hair pressed down on him, and somewhere in the dark he heard the mad jaws clashing. He was full awake and alert with all the instinct of self-preservation; and, like reality piercing through a nightmare, the click of Kennedy's revolver-hammer came to him.
"Don't shoot," he shouted, and fumbled for the throat-grip with his maimed hand as Kennedy flung himself on the two.
Dick said nothing when Abraham was laid at last like a moss-baby on the earth, and the fire was made up, and Okimow's bristles quieted. But when Kennedy floundered into self-accusation he swore impatiently.
"Sit up and make out the report of this capture," he said. "That'll keep you awake."
"I don't guess I know how"
"You've seen a Blue Book, haven't you? Get busy and shut up."
The shack fell silent. Outside, the world was infinitely quiet and far in its sweeping wastes of snow. The wood
