and to bring the Louchoux girl, MacNair threw himself belly-wise
onto his sled, gave voice to a weird cry as his dogs shot out across
the white snow-level of Snare Lake, and headed south-ward toward the
Yellow Knife.

He laughed aloud as he glanced over the back-trail and noted that half
of his Indians were already following. He had chosen that last cry
well. Never before had the Indians heard it from the white man's lips,
and they thrilled at the sound to the marrow. The blood surged through
the veins of the wild men as it had not surged in long decades. _It
was the war-cry of the Yellow Knives_!

CHAPTER XXIV

THE BATTLE

Bob MacNair's sled seemed scarcely to touch the hard surface of the
snow. The great _malemutes_ ran low and true over the well-defined
trail. He had selected the dogs with an eye to speed and endurance at
the time he had headed northward with Corporal Ripley after his release
from the Fort Saskatchewan jail.

The shouts of the following Indians died away. Familiar landmarks
leaped past, and save for an occasional word of encouragement MacNair
let the dogs set their own pace. For, consumed as he was by anxiety
for what might lie at the end of the trail, he knew that the homing
instinct of the wolf-dogs would carry them more miles and in better
heart than the sting of his long gut-lash.

At daylight the man halted for a half-hour, fed his dogs, and boiled
tea, which he drank in great gulps, hot and black, from the rim of the
pot. At noon one of the dogs showed signs of distress, and MacNair cut
him loose, leaving him to follow as best as he could. When darkness
fell only three dogs remained in harness, and these showed plainly the
effects of the long trail-strain. While behind, somewhere upon the
wide stretch of the Yellow Knife, the other four limped painfully in
the wake of their stronger team-mates.

An hour passed, during which the pace slackened perceptibly, and then
with only ten miles to go, two more dogs laid down. Pausing only to
cut them free from the harness, MacNair continued the trail on foot.
The hard-packed surface of the snow made the rackets unnecessary, and
the man struck into a long, swinging trot--the stride of an Indian
runner.

Mile after mile slipped by as the huge muscles of him, tireless as
bands of steel, flexed and sprung with the regularity of clockworks.
The rising moon was just topping the eastern pines as he dashed up the
steep bank of the cle