he hand, after hesitating a moment
longer, descended reluctantly to the sheath. As if fearing she could not
restrain herself, she crossed to the fire and threw on more wood. McCan
sat up, whimpering and snarling, between fright and rage spluttering an
inarticulate explanation.

"Where did you get it?" Smoke demanded.

"Feel around his body," Labiskwee said.

It was the first word she had spoken, and her voice quivered with the
anger she could not suppress.

McCan strove to struggle, but Smoke gripped him cruelly and searched
him, drawing forth from under his armpit, where it had been thawed by
the heat of his body, a strip of caribou meat. A quick exclamation from
Labiskwee drew Smoke's attention. She had sprung to McCan's pack and was
opening it. Instead of meat, out poured moss, spruce-needles, chips--all
the light refuse that had taken the place of the meat and given the pack
its due proportion minus its weight.

Again Labiskwee's hand went to her hip, and she flew at the culprit only
to be caught in Smoke's arms, where she surrendered herself, sobbing
with the futility of her rage.

"Oh, lover, it is not the food," she panted. "It is you, your life. The
dog! He is eating you, he is eating you!"

"We will yet live," Smoke comforted her. "Hereafter he shall carry the
flour. He can't eat that raw, and if he does I'll kill him myself,
for he will be eating your life as well as mine." He held her closer.
"Sweetheart, killing is men's work. Women do not kill."

"You would not love me if I killed the dog?" she questioned in surprise.

"Not so much," Smoke temporized.

She sighed with resignation. "Very well," she said. "I shall not kill
him."

The pursuit by the young men was relentless. By miracles of luck, as
well as by deduction from the topography of the way the runaways must
take, the young men picked up the blizzard-blinded trail and clung to
it. When the snow flew, Smoke and Labiskwee took the most improbable
courses, turning east when the better way opened south or west,
rejecting a low divide to climb a higher. Being lost, it did not matter.
Yet they could not throw the young men off. Sometimes they gained days,
but always the young men appeared again. After a storm, when all trace
was lost, they would cast out like a pack of hounds, and he who caught
the later trace made smoke signals to call his comrades on.

Smoke lost count of time, of days and nights and storms and camps.
Through a vast mad p