re were, tall and grey, with tails like plumes, whom
none but Pierre could lay hand upon, fierce and fearless as their
master. He drove with the killing cruelty of a stampeder, and they
loved him.

"You say you have grub cached at the old Indian hut on the Good Hope?"
questioned Willard.

"Sure! Five poun' bacon, leetle flour and rice. I cache one gum-boot
too, ha! Good thing for make fire queeck, eh?"

"You bet; an old rubber boot comes handy when it's too cold to make
shavings."

Leaving the coast, they ascended a deep and tortuous river where the
snow lay thick and soft. One man on snow-shoes broke trail for the
dogs till they reached the foothills. It was hard work, but infinitely
preferable to that which followed, for now they came into a dangerous
stretch of overflows. The stream, frozen to its bed, clogged the
passage of the spring water beneath, forcing it up through cracks till
it spread over the solid ice, forming pools and sheets covered with
treacherous ice-skins. Wet feet are fatal to man and beast, and they
made laborious detours, wallowing trails through tangled willows waist
deep in the snow smother, or clinging precariously to the overhanging
bluffs. As they reached the river's source the sky blackened suddenly,
and great clouds of snow rushed over the bleak hills, boiling down into
the valley with a furious draught. They flung up their flimsy tent,
only to have it flattened by the force of the gale that cut like
well-honed steel. Frozen spots leaped out white on their faces, while
their hands stiffened ere they could fasten the guy strings.

Finally, having lashed the tent bottom to the protruding willow tops,
by grace of heavy lifting they strained their flapping shelter up
sufficiently to crawl within.

"By Gar! She's blow hup ver' queeck," yelled Pierre, as he set the
ten-pound sheet-iron stove, its pipe swaying drunkenly with the heaving
tent.

"Good t'ing she hit us in the brush." He spoke as calmly as though
danger was distant, and a moment later the little box was roaring with
its oil-soaked kindlings.

"Will this stove burn green willow tops?" cried Willard.

"Sure! She's good stove. She'll burn hicicles eef you get 'im start
one times. See 'im get red?"

They rubbed the stiff spots from their cheeks, then, seizing the axe,
Willard crawled forth into the storm and dug at the base of the gnarled
bushes. Occasionally a shrub assumed the proportions of a man's
wrist-