ve got to move quick."

The storekeeper felt as though the bottom had dropped out of his
heart. He glanced up at the lowering night. "Storm brewing. We'll get
started right away." Without a moment's delay he disappeared inside
the store to make his preparations.

Onistah carried the news to McRae.

The blood washed out of the ruddy-whiskered face of the Scot, but his
sole comment was a Scriptural phrase of faith. "I have been young, and
now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken..."

It was less than half an hour later that four men and a dog-train
moved up the main street of Faraway and disappeared in the forest.
Morse broke trail and McRae drove the tandem. Onistah, who had already
traveled many miles, brought up the rear. The trooper exchanged places
with Morse after an hour's travel.

They were taking a short-cut and it led them through dead and down
timber that delayed the party. Tom was a good axeman, and more than
once he had to chop away obstructing logs. At other times by main
strength the men lifted or dragged the sled over bad places.

The swirling storm made it difficult to know where they were going or
to choose the best way. They floundered through deep snow and heavy
underbrush, faces bleeding from the whip of willow switches suddenly
released and feet so torn by the straps of the snowshoes that the
trail showed stains of blood which had soaked from the moccasins.

Onistah, already weary, began to lag. They dared not wait for him.
There was, they felt, not a moment to be lost. McRae's clean-shaven
upper lip was a straight, grim surface. He voiced no fears, no doubts,
but the others knew from their own anxiety how much he must be
suffering.

The gale increased. It drove in bitter blasts of fine stinging sleet.
When for a few hundred yards they drew out of the thick forest into an
open grove, it lashed them so furiously they could scarcely move in
the teeth of it.

The dogs were whimpering at their task. More than once they stopped,
exhausted by the wind against which they were battling. Their eyes
turned dumbly to McRae for instructions. He could only drive them back
to the trail Morse was breaking.

The train was one of the best in the North. The leader was a large
St. Bernard, weighing about one hundred sixty pounds, intelligent,
faithful, and full of courage. He stood thirty-four inches high at his
fore shoulder. Not once did Cuffy falter. Even when the others quit,
he was ready