ou--if that hoodoo doesn't catch me. I
don't know how I got here, but I'll know by the way I go out."

In a little valley, beside a frozen stream and under beneficent spruce
trees, he built a fire four days later. Somewhere in that white anarchy
he had left behind him was Surprise Lake--somewhere, he knew not where;
for a hundred hours of driftage and struggle through blinding, driving
snow had concealed his course from him, and he knew not in what
direction lay BEHIND. It was as if he had just emerged from a nightmare.
He was not sure whether four days or a week had passed. He had slept
with the dogs, fought across a forgotten number of shallow divides,
followed the windings of weird canyons that ended in pockets, and twice
had managed to make a fire and thaw out frozen moose-meat. And here he
was, well-fed and well-camped. The storm had passed, and it had turned
clear and cold. The lay of the land had again become rational. The creek
he was on was natural in appearance, and tended as it should toward the
southwest. But Surprise Lake was as lost to him as it had been to all
its seekers in the past.

Half a day's journey down the creek brought him to the valley of a
larger stream which he decided was the McQuestion. Here he shot a moose,
and once again each wolf-dog carried a full fifty-pound pack of meat. As
he turned down the McQuestion, he came upon a sled-trail. The late snows
had drifted over, but underneath, it was well packed by travel. His
conclusion was that two camps had been established on the McQuestion,
and that this was the connecting trail. Evidently, Two Cabins had been
found, and it was the lower camp, so he headed down the stream.

It was forty below zero when he camped that night, and he fell asleep
wondering who were the men who had rediscovered the Two Cabins, and if
he would fetch it next day. At the first hint of dawn he was under way,
easily following the half-obliterated trail and packing the recent snow
with his webbed shoes so that the dogs should not wallow.

And then it came, the unexpected, leaping out upon him on a bend of the
river. It seemed to him that he heard and felt simultaneously. The crack
of the rifle came from the right, and the bullet, tearing through and
across the shoulders of his drill parka and woollen coat, pivoted him
half around with the shock of its impact. He staggered on his twisted
snow-shoes to recover balance, and heard a second crack of the rifle.
This time i