hantasmagoria of suffering and toil he and Labiskwee
struggled on, with McCan somehow stumbling along in the rear, babbling
of San Francisco, his everlasting dream. Great peaks, pitiless and
serene in the chill blue, towered about them. They fled down black
canyons with walls so precipitous that the rock frowned naked, or
wallowed across glacial valleys where frozen lakes lay far beneath their
feet. And one night, between two storms, a distant volcano glared the
sky. They never saw it again, and wondered whether it had been a dream.

Crusts were covered with yards of new snow, that crusted and were
snow-covered again. There were places, in canyon- and pocket-drifts,
where they crossed snow hundreds of feet deep, and they crossed tiny
glaciers, in drafty rifts, wind-scurried and bare of any snow. They
crept like silent wraiths across the faces of impending avalanches, or
roused from exhausted sleep to the thunder of them. They made fireless
camps above timber-line, thawing their meat-rations with the heat of
their bodies ere they could eat. And through it all Labiskwee remained
Labiskwee. Her cheer never vanished, save when she looked at McCan, and
the greatest stupor of fatigue and cold never stilled the eloquence of
her love for Smoke.

Like a cat she watched the apportionment of the meager ration, and Smoke
could see that she grudged McCan every munch of his jaws. Once, she
distributed the ration. The first Smoke knew was a wild harangue of
protest from McCan. Not to him alone, but to herself, had she given
a smaller portion than to Smoke. After that, Smoke divided the meat
himself. Caught in a small avalanche one morning after a night of snow,
and swept a hundred yards down the mountain, they emerged half-stifled
and unhurt, but McCan emerged without his pack in which was all the
flour. A second and larger snow-slide buried it beyond hope of recovery.
After that, though the disaster had been through no fault of his,
Labiskwee never looked at McCan, and Smoke knew it was because she dared
not.

It was a morning, stark still, clear blue above, with white sun-dazzle
on the snow. The way led up a long, wide slope of crust. They moved like
weary ghosts in a dead world. No wind stirred in the stagnant, frigid
calm. Far peaks, a hundred miles away, studding the backbone of the
Rockies up and down, were as distinct as if no more than five miles
away.

"Something is going to happen," Labiskwee whispered. "Don't you feel