"I couldn't find that the brute had bitten any of the others, but next
day two of 'em suddenly went clean off, and they certainly did bite
another pair before I shot them. Next day I had to kill the other pair,
and was expecting every minute to see the bitch, the only one left,
break out. However, she seems to have escaped it."

Dick said nothing of the weary subsequent days in which he himself had
toiled hour after hour in the traces, ahead of his one dog, with a
maniac wrapped in rugs and lashed on the sled-pack. But Jim Willis
needed no telling. He saw the trace-marks all across the chest and
shoulders of Dick's coat, and he knew without any telling all about the
corresponding mark that must be showing on Dick's own skin.

"Well, say," he remarked, admiringly, "but you do seem to 've bin up
against it good an' hard."

Very briefly, and as though the matter barely called for mention, Dick
explained, in answer to an inquiry, why he had to make a dead burden of
the madman.

It seemed that when first his team had been reduced to one rather
undersized dog he did arrange for his charge to walk. And within an
hour, having cunningly awaited his opportunity, the demented creature
had leaped upon him from behind, exactly as a wolf might, and fastened
his teeth in Dick's neck. That, though Dick said little of it, had been
the beginning of a strange and terrible struggle, of which the sole
observer was a single sled-dog.

To and fro in the trampled snow the men had swayed and fought for fully
a quarter of an hour before Dick had finally mastered the madman and
bound him hand and foot. He was a big man, of muscular build, and
madness had added hugely to his natural capabilities as a fighter. Dick
Vaughan's bandaged neck, and his right thumb, bitten through to the
bone, would permanently carry the marks of this poor wretch's ferocity
in that lonely struggle on the trail.

"Don't seem right, somehow," was Jim Willis's comment. "I guess I'd have
had to put a bullet into him."

"Ah no; that wouldn't do at all," said Dick.

He did not attempt to explain just why; and perhaps he hardly could have
done so had he tried, for that would have involved some explanation of
the pride and the traditions of the force in which he served, and those
are things rarely spoken of by those who understand them best and are
most influenced by them.

"And where might you be making for now?" asked Jim.

"Well, I'm bound for Edmonton. But sinc