A cold bitter wind hurled its defiance along the slope, its shrieking voice trumpeting through the pines. In the sky—a vast canopy flung over a frozen world—the sun shone wanly. On either side of the sun hung sun-dogs. In the air—frost. Below, a limitless, monotonous expanse of snow.

In the sledge, which flew along over the hard snow-surface, Dick and Toma sat muffled to their ears. From time to time, they beat their arms about their shivering bodies and urged on the dogs. Already they had come eight or ten miles along the faint trail they had made on the previous day.

In their pursuit of the Indian they had expected, quite naturally, to go southwestward in the direction of the Indian encampment. With their lighter load and swifter team; they would rapidly gain on him. Before night, surely, they would overtake him. It was all simply a matter of time and patience and perseverance. In the end, they would be successful.
155

Much to their surprise, the thief chose a different route entirely. Apparently he had no intention of returning to his home and friends with his ill-gained booty. A few miles farther on, he had set his course to the west, following a hill-chain that ran parallel to the Wapiti River.

The boys turned sharply and continued the pursuit. The sledge tracks of the thief could be discerned quite plainly.

“I can’t imagine where he’s going,” mused Dick. “It isn’t to his own home. Where do you suppose, Toma?”

“Mebbe up in the hills somewhere to another encampment. Mebbe him ’fraid to go back to his own people.”

“Or,” guessed the other, “perhaps his purpose is to make a secret cache up there in the hills. He thinks, no doubt, that the mail sacks and medicine chests are filled with valuable provisions. I’d like to see his face when he opens one of them.”

Toma broke into a low chuckle.

“It make me laugh if he try drink medicine an’ get very sick. Mebbe him fool enough to think medicine some new kind of whiskey.”

“God help him, if he does. I don’t know what sort of medicine Dr. Brady may have there. There’s vaccine for smallpox and drugs of all kinds. I’m sure that some of them are deadly poison. He’s apt to be more than sick if he tries it.”
156

Presently the trail wound into the hills. It went up and up and up, and then down and then up again. It skirted deep ravines and dangerous precipices. It crossed the wide basin of a lake. It continued on—the rutted tracks of that thief’s sledge—with the unbroken insistence of the passing of time itself.

“He’s certainly travelling and no mistake. He must be going almost as fast as we are,” complained Dick. “He’ll kill that team of mine.”

“Don’t you worry, we catch him. Pretty soon we catch him.”

“We will, of course, if we don’t lose his trail. The fool will be compelled to stop soon for something to eat.”

“Sometimes Indians go days without stop for something to eat,” commented Toma.

“Not if he thinks he has a store of precious things aboard,” grinned his companion. “His fingers will be itching to get at those sacks. He’ll want to explore the mystery of those medicine chests.”

Again Toma chuckled.

“This mail all same like ’em paper?” he inquired.
157

“It is paper,” replied Dick. “Envelopes, hundreds of envelopes, bulging with paper. Then, in the second-class mail pouches, there’ll be circulars and catalogs and newspapers, hundreds of pounds altogether to tempt his mounting appetite. I think he’ll relish the stamps too. They’ll be green and red, with a picture of King George on one side and mucilage on the other. The mucilage has a sweet, toothsome taste he’ll like.”

Toma doubled up in a paroxysm of laughter.

“I think that very good joke on that Indian. Mebbe him find out it bad thing to steal.”

“I don’t know about that. He looks as if he were beyond redemption.”

Toma cracked his whip, and the huskies sprang forward, scrambling up an incline. It was steep here, so Dick got out and trotted behind. The exercise warmed his feet and sent the blood racing through his body.

When he tumbled back on the sledge again, Toma half-turned and with the butt of his whip pointed excitedly at the dogs.

“Look!” he cried.

The sudden change in the behavior of the huskies was very noticeable. Their ears were pricked higher. The leader, a beautiful long-haired malemute, so much resembling a wolf that it was almost impossible to tell the difference, had commenced to whine softly, straining at her harness in fitful, nervous leaps.

“Somebody close ahead,” Toma whispered. “We see ’em pretty quick now.”
158

Dick leaned forward and picked up his rifle, and commenced fumbling with the breech. His expression had grown suddenly tense. He rose to a position on his knees, swaying there from the motion of the sleigh, his gaze set unwaveringly, expectantly, on the trail ahead.

At a furious rate of speed, they descended another slope, then, more slowly, began circling up around the next hill, emerging to a sparsely wooded area, which, in turn, at the farther side, dropped abruptly to a deep tree-covered valley.

Abruptly, the boys turned toward each other. Toma muttered something under his breath; Dick relaxed to a sitting position, whistling his astonishment.

“I didn’t expect anything like this,” remarked Dick, recovering somewhat from his surprise. “An Indian village! Look, Toma, there are scores of tepees down there. No wonder he came this way.”

Again they started—but not at the sight of those tepees, strung along the floor of the valley, nor yet at the sight of the Indians themselves, here and there plainly distinguishable—but at the appearance of a loaded sledge behind a team of gray malemutes, proceeding quickly toward the village.

“He isn’t very far ahead of us,” exulted Dick. “He’ll soon be cornered. He can’t get away. We’ve won, Toma.”

Toma’s eyes were shining.

“Him big fool to come here. What you think?”
159

“He may have friends. Perhaps they’ll want to shield him.”

The young Indian’s answer was to crack his whip and to shout to the huskies. The sledge leaped forward. It threw up a quantity of loose snow, through which it plowed. It rocked perilously as it negotiated the top of the valley slope, then, in spite of Dick’s foot pressed hard on the brake-board, shot down, almost running over the dogs.

Taking a steeper but more direct route to the village than had been attempted by the thief, they were only a few yards behind him when they made their final whirlwind spurt through the orderly row of tepees and the gaping crowds, and came to a jarring but dramatic halt.

The thief was unaware of his danger, had not even a premonition............