ll go back to your cabin and get what you have left----"

"There won't be none left----"

"Are you so low as that? Then listen. Do you know where Bill's
Twenty-three Mile cabin is?"

Pete nodded. Joe made no response.

"Then you can find it, Pete. I haven't any idea where it is myself.
It's only a day's march, and he's got it packed with grub. You hide out
there, and the little food we have left in the cabin'll be enough to
take us down there too--the woman and I--we'll follow your snowshoes
tracks. Then we'll make it through to the Yuga from there. And if we
have to, we can go over to a grizzly carcass I know of and cut off a few
pounds of meat--but we won't have to. We'll join you at the
Twenty-three Mile cabin to-morrow night."

Pete the breed looked doubtful. "Bear over--east?" he asked.

"Somewhere over there," Harold replied.

"Don't guess any bear meat left. Heard coyotes--hundred of
'em--over east. Pack of wolves came through too--sang song over there."

Harold could agree with him. If indeed the wolves and the coyotes had
gathered--starving gray skulkers of the forest--the great skeleton
would have been stripped clean by now. However, it didn't complicate
his own problem. The Indians could get down to the Twenty-three Mile
cabin with the morsel of food they had left--he and Virginia could
follow their trail with the fragment of supplies remaining in Bill's
cabin.

"You can go from there to the Yuga and hide out," Harold went on. "I'll
go down to the recorder's office with the woman. Don't worry about her,
I'll tell 'em that you were two Indians from the East Selkirks, give 'em
a couple of false names and send 'em on a goose chase. It's simple as
day and doesn't need any nerve. And if you've got it through your
heads, I'm going back to the cabin."

They had it through their heads. The plan, as Harold said, was
exceedingly simple. They digested it slowly, then nodded. But Pete had
one more question--one that was wholly characteristic of his weasel
soul.

"What do you want us to use?" he asked. "This?" He indicated the thin
blade at his thigh. "Maybe use rifle?"

Harold's eyes looked drowsy when he answered. Something like a lust, a
desire swept over him; this question of Pete's moved him in dark and
evil ways. "Oh, I don't know," he replied. "It doesn't much
matter----" He spoke in a strained, thick voice that was vaguely
exciting to the two breeds. For a few seconds he