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Uppy knew they were on the edge of the big barren of the Lacs Delesse, and he cracked his whip just as the off runner of the sledge struck a hidden snow-blister. There was a sudden lurch, and in a vicious up-shoot of the gee-bar the revolver was knocked from Dolores' hand and was gone. A shriek rose to her lips, but she stifled it before it was given voice.
A few minutes later she called upon Uppy to stop the team. Then she faced him, close to Peter, with the revolver in her hand. "Uppy," she demanded, speaking slowly and distinctly, "what was it Blake said to you?" For a moment Uppy made as if to feign stupidity. The revolver covered a spot half-way between his narrow-slit eyes. "I shall shoot " Uppy gave a choking gasp.
Not more than a third of a mile away a point of yellow flame flared up in the night. "Give me the revolver, Peter." Peter gave it to her without a word. She went to Uppy, and at the touch of her foot he was out of his sleeping-bag, his moon-face staring at her. She pointed back to the fire. Her face was dead white. The revolver was pointed straight at Uppy's heart.
I think I shall shoot unless you have the meat and kindlings put on Peter's sledge immediately and give Uppy instructions in English to drive us to Fort Confidence. Peter and I will both go with the six-dog sledge. Give the instructions quickly, Mr. Blake!" Blake, recovering from the shock she had given him, flashed back at her his cool and cynical smile.
Experience had taught him the power and the significance of firearms, just as it had made him understand the uses for which spears, and harpoons, and whips were made. He had seen the woman shoot Blake, and he had seen her ready to shoot at Uppy. Therefore he understood that they were enemies and that all associated with them were enemies.
In ten seconds the other five were howling with him, and scarcely had the tumult burst from their throats when there came a response from the fire half a mile away. "My God!" gasped Peter, under his breath. Dolores sprang to the gee-bar, and Uppy lashed his long whip until it cracked like a repeating rifle over the pack. The dogs responded and sped through the night.
"Uppy, if they did, they'd have an outfit after us in twenty-four hours." Oopi, his Eskimo right-hand man, had learned to understand English, and he nodded, his moon-face split by a wide and enigmatic grin. In his way, "Uppy" was as clever as Shan Tung had been in his.
At his back the yellow boxes were piled high, his crutch propped against them, and continually he speeded the play by calling out, "Passy, calley or makum bigger!" "Comely center!" or, "Ante uppy!" These were the sounds that had swept my memory back to civilization and drawn me from my Golden Bed.
All through the night the game raged beneath the light of the candlenuts, in a silence broken only by the hoarse breathing of the crouching brown men, the sandy-sounding rustle of the palm-fronds overhead, and cries of "Ante uppy!" or "Comely center!" When dawn came grayly through the aisles of the grove, they halted briefly to eat a bowl of popoi and to drink the milk of freshly gathered nuts.
After that there was a long silence broken only by the low voices of the woman and the man, and the heavy breathing of the tired dogs. Wapi himself dozed off, but never for long. Then Dolores nodded, and her head drooped until it found a pillow on Peter's shoulder. Gently Peter drew a bearskin about her, and for a long time sat wide-awake, guarding Uppy and baring his ears at intervals to listen.
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