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It was bitter cold, at least sixty-five below zero, and when Kama harnessed the dogs with naked hands he was compelled several times to go over to the fire and warm the numbing finger-tips. Together the two men loaded and lashed the sled. They warmed their hands for the last time, pulled on their mittens, and mushed the dogs over the bank and down to the river-trail.

Here, at the junction with the main river-trail, somebody had lighted a fire, and here Shorty said good bye. By the light of the fire, as the sled leaped behind the flying dogs, Smoke caught another of the unforgettable pictures of the North Land.

Those who sought us must have sent a party up the river immediately after we escaped; for when we came at last onto the river-trail not far from our destination, there can be no doubt but that we were seen by Hoojans who were just ahead of us on the stream.

"No." "You intended to let me shift for myself out here in this wilderness?" "Yes, after this Indian guides you to the river-trail," said Brandt, indicating with his finger the nearest savage. "I get what you frontier men call the double-cross'?" "That's it," replied Brandt with a hard laugh, in which Legget joined. A short pause ensued. "What will you do with the girl?" "That's my affair."

"Off there," replied George, "but I am going to take you to the river-trail." "What for?" "So that you can get something to eat." If they had been a little farther down the river, say about twenty-five miles, George would have taken them to his own house.

Early in the morning the little procession laughing, joking, skylarking with the high spirits of men in the woods took its way up the river-trail. Late that evening, tired, but still inclined to mischief, they came to the first dam, where Shearer and Andrews met them. "How do you like it, Tim?" asked Thorpe that evening.

He put his galled shoulder to the haul-rope and took the river-trail south. An hour later he halted. An inviting swale left the river and led off to the right at an acute angle. He left his sled and limped up the swale for half a mile. Between him and the river was three hundred yards of flat ground covered with cottonwoods. He crossed the cottonwoods to the bank of the Yukon.

When they had finished their coffee, Emerson laid two silver dollars on the table, and they left the house to search out the river-trail again. The early darkness, hastened by the storm, was upon them when they crept up the opposite bank an hour later, and through the gloom beheld a group of great shadowy buildings.

He knew perfectly that it would only put Neilson on his guard if he stated his true position; and besides, he wanted word of Ezram. "I may have a wrong steer, Mr. Neilson," he said, "but a man I met down on the river-trail, out of Snowy Gulch, advised me to come here.

When such chance travellers approached the bend, he had noticed how they seemed to see something there, which he could not see, and climbing out of the river-trail, making a wide circuit, hurried their steps to get quickly by. Though he had spoken to no one for so long a time, he had not been lonely watching for Peggy was a continual, if painful, source of excitement.