elief that after he was dead and frozen stiff no amount of rough
trailing by the dogs could roll him from the sledge.

In this conjecture he was right. When the starved and exhausted
malamutes dragged their silent burden into the Northwest Mounted Police
outpost barracks at Crooked Bow twenty-four hours later, an ax and a
sapling bar were required to pry Francois Breault from his bier.
Previous to this process, however, Sergeant Fitzgerald, in charge at
the outpost, took possession of the soiled envelope pinned to Breault's
red scarf. The information it bore was simple, and yet exceedingly
definite. Few men in dying as Breault had died could have made the
matter easier for the police.

On the envelope he had written:

Jan Thoreau shot me and left me for dead. Have just strength to write
this--no more.

Francois Breault.

It was epic--a colossal monument to this man, thought Sergeant
Fitzgerald, as they pried the frozen body loose.

To Corporal Blake fell the unpleasant task of going after Jan Thoreau.
Unpleasant, because Breault's starved huskies and frozen body brought
with them the worst storm of the winter. In the face of this storm
Blake set out, with the Sergeant's last admonition in his ears:

"Don't come back, Blake, until you've got him, dead or alive."

That is a simple and efficacious formula in the rank and file of the
Royal Northwest Mounted Police. It has made volumes of stirring
history, because it means a great deal and has been lived up to. Twice
before, the words had been uttered to Blake--in extreme cases. The
first time they had taken him for six months into the Barren Lands
between Hudson's Bay and the Great Slave--and he came back with his
man; the second time he was gone for nearly a year along the rim of the
Arctic--and from there also he came back with his man. Blake was of
that sort. A bull-dog, a Nemesis when he was once on the trail,
and--like most men of that kind--without a conscience. In the Blue
Books of the service he was credited with arduous patrols and unusual
exploits. "Put Blake on the trail" meant something, and "He is one of
our best men" was a firmly established conviction at departmental
headquarters.

Only one man knew Blake as Blake actually lived under his skin--and
that was Blake himself. He hunted men and ran them down without
mercy--not because he loved the law, but for the reason that he had in
him the inherited instincts of the hound. This comparison, if quite