game. And I
figure you're putting up the biggest stake. I've got a funny sort of
feeling that you're going to cash in before we reach the cabin."

For barely an instant the mysterious gleam far back in Blake's eyes
died out. There was the hard, low note in Philip's voice which carried
conviction and Blake knew he was ready to play the hand which he held.
With a grunt and a shrug of his shoulders he stirred up the dogs with a
crack of his whip and struck out at their head due west. During the
next half hour Philip's eyes and ears were ceaselessly on the alert. He
traveled close to Blake, with the big Colt in his hand, watching every
hummock and bit of cover as they came to it. He also watched Blake and
in the end was convinced that in the back of the outlaw's head was a
sinister scheme in which he had the utmost confidence in spite of his
threats and the fact that they had successfully got around Upi's camp.
Once or twice when their eyes happened to meet he caught in Blake's
face a contemptuous coolness, almost a sneering exultation which the
other could not quite conceal. It filled him with a scarcely definable
uneasiness. He was positive that Blake realized he would carry out his
threat at the least sign of treachery or the appearance of an enemy,
and yet he could not free himself from the uncomfortable oppression
that was beginning to take hold of him. He concealed it from Blake. He
tried to fight it out of himself. Yet it persisted. It was something
which seemed to hover in the air about him--the FEEL of a danger which
he could not see.

And then Blake suddenly pointed ahead over an open plain and said:

"There is the Coppermine."

CHAPTER XXIII

A cry from Celie turned his gaze from the broad white trail of ice that
was the Coppermine, and as he looked she pointed eagerly toward a huge
pinnacle of rock that rose like an oddly placed cenotaph out of the
unbroken surface of the plain.

Blake grunted out a laugh in his beard and his eyes lit up with an
unpleasant fire as they rested on her flushed face.

"She's tellin' you that Bram Johnson brought her this way," he
chuckled. "Bram was a fool--like you!"

He seemed not to expect a reply from Philip, but urged the dogs down
the slope into the plain. Fifteen minutes later they were on the
surface of the river.

Philip drew a deep breath of relief, and he found that same relief in
Celie's face when he dropped back to her side. As far as they could see