e to
Smoke. "He is eating," she said. "It is not good."

Smoke looked. The Irishman was secretly munching caribou suet from the
pocketful he carried.

"No eating between meals, McCan," he commanded. "There's no game in the
country ahead, and the grub will have to be whacked in equal rations
from the start. The only way you can travel with us is by playing fair."

By one o'clock the crust had thawed so that the skees broke through, and
before two o'clock the web-shoes were breaking through. Camp was made
and the first meal eaten. Smoke took stock of the food. McCan's supply
was a disappointment. So many silver fox-skins had he stuffed in the
bottom of the meat bag that there was little space left for meat.

"Sure an' I didn't know there was so many," he explained. "I done it
in the dark. But they're worth good money. An' with all this ammunition
we'll be gettin' game a-plenty."

"The wolves will eat you a-plenty," was Smoke's hopeless comment, while
Labiskwee's eyes flashed their anger.

Enough food for a month, with careful husbanding and appetites that
never blunted their edge, was Smoke's and Labiskwee's judgment. Smoke
apportioned the weight and bulk of the packs, yielding in the end to
Labiskwee's insistence that she, too, should carry a pack.

Next day the stream shallowed out in a wide mountain valley, and they
were already breaking through the crust on the flats when they gained
the harder surface of the slope of the divide.

"Ten minutes later and we wouldn't have got across the flats," Smoke
said, when they paused for breath on the bald crest of the summit. "We
must be a thousand feet higher here."

But Labiskwee, without speaking, pointed down to an open flat among the
trees. In the midst of it, scattered abreast, were five dark specks that
scarcely moved.

"The young men," said Labiskwee.

"They are wallowing to their hips," Smoke said. "They will never gain
the hard footing this day. We have hours the start of them. Come on,
McCan. Buck up. We don't eat till we can't travel."

McCan groaned, but there was no caribou suet in his pocket, and he
doggedly brought up the rear.

In the higher valley in which they now found themselves, the crust did
not break till three in the afternoon, at which time they managed to
gain the shadow of a mountain where the crust was already freezing
again. Once only they paused to get out McCan's confiscated suet, which
they ate as they walked. The meat was frozen s