“However, I put the best face I could on the matter and even tried to talk cheerfully to Nevins. But he would have none of my conversation and zig-zagged along on his snow shoes with his queer, swinging gait in the same silent way. It began to grow dusk, and I saw that we should never make the lake that night. I halted Nevins and told him so.

“He gave an odd kind of laugh.

“‘Not make it? Man alive. I’m going to make it’ he grated out in an odd, rasping sort of a voice.

“‘Don’t talk like a fool,’ said I. ‘Come, here’s a place under this ledge that’ll make a good camp, and bright and early we’ll hit the trail again.’

“He whipped round on me with blazing eyes.[269] If ever a demon shone out of a man’s optics it blazed out of his.

“‘I’m going on, I tell you,’ he snarled, ‘and what’s more, you’re going with me.’

“I’ve been in some pretty tight places, but take my word for it, right then I began to think that I hadn’t begun to know what a tight corner was. I could see by the way that poor crazy Nevins gripped his rifle that he meant to have company on his night ‘mush,’ even if he had to shoot him to get it. I felt as if somebody had dropped a chunk of ice down my back.

“‘All right, Nevins,’ I said, ‘I’ll go along. Don’t get excited.’

“‘I’m not excited,’ he said. And then he added, ‘It’s only that they’ll get us if we don’t keep on going.’

“‘Who’s them?’ I inquired.

“‘Those things that have been following us,’ he whispered.

[270]

“Then he came quite close to me and caught my arm.

“‘They live back there up in the snow, and they’re trying to get me and take me back with them, but they won’t.’ He broke into a wild laugh that made my scalp tighten till I could almost feel my hat lift on my hair.

“‘Don’t talk nonsense, Nevins,’ I snapped. ‘We’re far ahead of them. They’ll never catch us now.’

“He looked sharply at me.

“‘You’re more of a fool than I thought you,’ he said contemptuously. ‘They’ve been following us all day. They’re close behind us now!’

“I confess that his manner was such that I jumped nervously and looked behind me as he spoke. Of course there was nothing there but the trail, and I told him so, but a contemptuous laugh was all that I got.

“Well, in the course of my career as a trooper I’ve handled some pretty bad characters and been[271] into some tight places and faced some situations where things looked mighty bad, but I never felt such a feeling of real scare as I had at that moment. Having made this outburst, Nevins started off again. After a while, when it began to get dark, I determined to make a last try to check his crazy plan. I stopped dead.

“‘Here’s where I stop, Nevins,’ I said. ‘I’m dead beat.’

&............