They took up the trail methodically, as though no hurry existed. At the usual time of the evening they camped. Dick was for pushing on an extra hour or so, announcing himself not in the least tired, and the dogs fresh, but Sam would have none of it.

"It's going to be a long, hard pull," he said. "We're not going to catch up with him to-day, or to-morrow, or next day. It ain't a question of whether you're tired or the dogs are fresh to-night; it's a question of how you're going to be a month from now."

"We won't be able to follow him a month," objected Dick.

"Why?"

"It'll snow, and then we'll lose th' trail. The spring snows can't be far off now. They'll cover it a foot deep."

"Mebbe," agreed Sam, inconclusively.

"Besides," pursued Dick, "he'll be with his own people in less than a month, and then there won't be any trail to follow."

Whereupon Sam looked a little troubled, for this, in his mind, was the chief menace to their success. If Jingoss turned south to the Lake Superior country, he could lose himself among the Ojibways of that region; and, if all remained true to him, the white men would never again be able to get trace of him. _If all remained true to him:_--on the chance of that Sam was staking his faith. The Honourable the Hudson's Bay Company has been established a great many years; it has always treated its Indians justly; it enjoys a tremendous prestige for infallibility. The bonds of race are strong, but the probabilities were good that in the tribes with whom Jingoss would be forced to seek sanctuary would be some members, whose loyalty to the Company would out-balance the rather shadowy obligation to a man they had never seen before. Jingoss might be betrayed. The chances of it were fairly good. Sam Bolton knew that the Indian must be perfectly aware of this, and doubted if he would take the risk. A single man with three dogs ought to run away from three pursuers with only four. Therefore, the old woodsman thought himself justified in relying at least on the meagre opportunity a stern chase would afford.

He did not know where the Indian would be likely to lead him. The checker-board of the wilderness lay open. As he had before reflected, it would be only too easy for Jingoss to keep between himself and his pursuers the width of the game. The Northwest was wide; the plains great; the Rocky Mountains lofty and full of hiding-places,--it seemed likely he would turn west. Or the deep forests of the other coast offered unlimited opportunities of concealment,--the east might well be his choice. It did not matter particularly. Into either it would not be difficult to follow; and Sam hoped in either to gain a sight of his prize before the snow melted.

The Indian, however, after the preliminary twists and turns of indecision, turned due north. For nearly a week Sam thought this must be a ruse, or a cast by which to gain some route known to Jingoss. But the forests began to dwindle; the muskegs to open. The Land of Little Sticks could not be far distant, and beyond them was the Barren Grounds. The old woodsman knew the defaulter for a reckless and determined man. Gradually the belief, and at last the conviction, forced itself on him that here he gamed with no cautious player. The Indian was laying on the table the stakes of life or death. He, too, had realised that the test must be one of endurance, and in the superbness of his confidence he had determined not to play with preliminary half measures, but to apply at once the supreme test to himself and his antagonists. He was heading directly out into the winter desert, where existed no game but the single big caribou herd whose pastures were so wide that to meet them would be like encountering a single school of dolphins in all the seven seas.

As soon as Sam discovered this, he called Dick's attention to it.

"We're in for it," said he, "he's going to take us out on the Barren Grounds and lose us."

"If he can," supplemented Dick.

"Yes, if he can," agreed Sam. After a moment he went on, pursuing his train of thought aloud, as was his habit.

"He's thinking he has more grub than we have; that's about what it amounts to. He thinks he can tire us out. The chances are we'll find no more game. We've got to go on what we have. He's probably got a sledge-load;--and so have we;--but he has only one to feed, and three dogs, and we have three and four dogs."

"That's all right; he's our Injun," replied Dick, voicing the instinct of race superiority which, after all, does often seem to accomplish the impossible. "It's too bad we have the girl with us," he added, after a moment.

"Yes, it is," agreed Sam. Yet it was most significant that now it occurred to neither of them that she might be abandoned.

The daily supply of provisions was immediately cut to a minimum, and almost at once they felt the effects. The north demands hard work and the greatest resisting power of the vitality; the vitality calls on the body for fuel; and the body in turn insists on food. It is astonishing to see what quantities of nourishment can be absorbed without apparent effect. And when the food is denied, but the vitality is still called upon, it is equally astonishing to see how quickly it takes its revenge. Our travellers became lean in two days, dizzy in a week, tired to the last fibre, on the edge of exhaustion. They took care, however, not to step over that edge.

Sam Bolton saw to it. His was not only the bodily labour, but the mental anxiety. His attitude was the tenseness of a helmsman in a heavy wind, quivering to the faintest indication, ready to give her all she will bear, but equally ready to luff this side of disaster. Only his equable mind could have resisted an almost overpowering impulse toward sporadic bursts of speed or lengthening of hours. He had much of this to repress in Dick. But on the other hand he watched zealously against the needless waste of even a single second. Every expedient his long woods life or his native ingenuity suggested he applied at once to the problem of the greatest speed, the least expenditure of energy to a given end, the smallest consumption of food compatible with the preservation of strength. The legitimate travel of a day might amount to twenty or thirty miles. Sam added an extra five or ten to them. And that five or ten he drew from the living tissues of his very life. They were a creation, made from nothing, given a body by the individual genius of the man. The drain cut down his nervous energy, made him lean, drew the anxious lines of an incipient exhaustion across his brow.

At first, as may be gathered, the advantages of the game seemed to be strongly in the Indian's favour. The food supply, the transportation facilities, and advantage of position in case game should be encountered were all his. Against him he need count seriously only the offset of dogged Anglo-Saxon grit. B............