u," Breck said. "Ten days' grub,
blankets, matches, tobacco, an axe, and a rifle."

"Go to it," Lucy encouraged. "Hit the high places, stranger. Beat it as
fast as God'll let you."

"I'm going to have a square meal before I start," Smoke said. "And when
I start it will be up the McQuestion, not down. I want you to go along
with me, Breck. We're going to search that other bank for the man that
really did the killing."

"If you'll listen to me, you'll head down for the Stewart and the
Yukon," Breck objected. "When this gang gets back from my low-grade
hydraulic proposition, it will be seeing red."

Smoke laughed and shook his head.

"I can't jump this country, Breck. I've got interests here. I've got to
stay and make good. I don't care whether you believe me or not, but I've
found Surprise Lake. That's where that gold came from. Besides, they
took my dogs, and I've got to wait to get them back. Also, I know what
I'm about. There was a man hidden on that bank. He came pretty close to
emptying his magazine at me."

Half an hour afterward, with a big plate of moose-steak before him and
a big mug of coffee at his lips, Smoke half-started up from his seat. He
had heard the sounds first. Lucy threw open the door.

"Hello, Spike; hello, Methody," she greeted the two frost-rimed men who
were bending over the burden on their sled.

"We just come down from Upper Camp," one said, as the pair staggered
into the room with a fur-wrapped object which they handled with
exceeding gentleness. "An' this is what we found by the way. He's all
in, I guess."

"Put him in the near bunk there," Lucy said. She bent over and pulled
back the furs, disclosing a face composed principally of large, staring,
black eyes, and of skin, dark and scabbed by repeated frost-bite,
tightly stretched across the bones.

"If it ain't Alonzo!" she cried. "You pore, starved devil!"

"That's the man on the other bank," Smoke said in an undertone to Breck.

"We found it raidin' a cache that Harding must 'a' made," one of the men
was explaining. "He was eatin' raw flour an' frozen bacon, an' when we
got 'm he was cryin' an' squealin' like a hawg. Look at him! He's all
starved, an' most of him frozen. He'll kick at any moment."

Half an hour later, when the furs had been drawn over the face of the
still form in the bunk, Smoke turned to Lucy. "If you don't mind, Mrs.
Peabody, I'll have another whack at that steak. Make it thick and not so
well done. I'm