ed to hear an' listen."

"Go on," Smoke answered.

"Well, she tells me, plain an' simple, that we ain't never goin' to get
out of this hole in the ground in days an' days. We're goin' to find
trouble an' be stuck in here a long time an' then some."

"Does she say anything about grub?" Smoke queried unsympathetically.
"For we haven't grub for days and days and days and then some."

"Nope. Nary whisper about grub. I guess we'll manage to make out. But
I tell you one thing, Smoke, straight an' flat. I'll eat any dog in the
team exceptin' Bright. I got to draw the line on Bright. I just couldn't
scoff him."

"Cheer up," Smoke girded. "My hunch is working overtime. She tells me
there'll be no dogs eaten, and, whether it's moose or caribou or quail
on toast, we'll all fatten up."

Shorty snorted his unutterable disgust, and silence obtained for another
quarter of an hour.

"There's the beginning of your trouble," Smoke said, halting on his
snow-shoes and staring at an object that lay on one side of the old
trail.

Shorty left the gee-pole and joined him, and together they gazed down on
the body of a man beside the trail.

"Well fed," said Smoke.

"Look at them lips," said Shorty.

"Stiff as a poker," said Smoke, lifting an arm, that, without moving,
moved the whole body.

"Pick 'm up an' drop 'm and he'd break to pieces," was Shorty's comment.

The man lay on his side, solidly frozen. From the fact that no snow
powdered him, it was patent that he had lain there but a short time.

"There was a general fall of snow three days back," said Shorty.

Smoke nodded, bending over the corpse, twisting it half up to face them,
and pointing to a bullet wound in the temple. He glanced to the side and
tilted his head at a revolver that lay on top of the snow.

A hundred yards farther on they came upon a second body that lay face
downward in the trail. "Two things are pretty clear," Smoke said.
"They're fat. That means no famine. They've not struck it rich, else
they wouldn't have committed suicide."

"If they did," Shorty objected.

"They certainly did. There are no tracks besides their own, and each is
powder-burned." Smoke dragged the corpse to one side and with the toe
of his moccasin nosed a revolver out of the snow into which it had been
pressed by the body. "That's what did the work. I told you we'd find
something."

"From the looks of it we ain't started yet. Now what'd two fat geezers
want to kill theirselv