once a day.
Otherwise they get sleepy and sluggish, losing the edge of their
keenness.

They were off to an early start. There was a cold head wind that was
uncomfortable. For hours they held to the slow, swinging stride of the
webs. Sometimes the trail was through the forest, sometimes in and out
of brush and small timber. Twice during the day they crossed lakes and
hit up a lively pace. Once they came to a muskeg, four miles across,
and had to plough over the moss hags while brush tangled their feet
and slapped their faces.

Cuffy was a prince of leaders. He seemed to know by some sixth sense
the best way to wind through underbrush and over swamps. He was
master of the train and ruled by strength and courage as well as
intelligence. Bull had ideas of his own, but after one sharp brush
with Cuffy, from which he had emerged ruffled and bleeding, the native
dog relinquished claim to dominance.

The travelers made about fifteen miles before noon. They came to a
solitary tepee, built on the edge of a lake with a background of
snow-burdened spruce. This lodge was constructed of poles arranged
cone-shaped side by side, the chinks between plastered with moss
wedged in to fill every crevice. A thin wisp of smoke rose from an
open space in the top.

At the sound of the yelping dogs a man lifted the moose-skin curtain
that served as a door. He was an old and wrinkled Cree. His face was
so brown and tough and netted with seams that it resembled a piece of
alligator leather. From out of it peered two very small bright eyes.

"Ugh! Ugh!" he grunted.

This appeared to be all the English that he knew. Beresford tried him
in French and discovered he had a smattering of it. After a good many
attempts, the soldier found that he had seen no white man with a
dog-train in many moons. The Cree lived there alone, it appeared, and
trapped for a living. Why he was separated from all his kin and tribal
relations the young Canadian could not find out at the time. Later he
learned that the old fellow was an outcast because he had once shown
the white feather in a battle with Blackfeet fifty years earlier.

Before they left, the travelers discovered that he knew two more words
of English. One was rum, the other tobacco. He begged for both. They
left him a half-foot of tobacco. The scant supply of whiskey they had
brought was for an emergency.

Just before night fell, Morse shot two ptarmigan in the woods. These
made a welcome addition t