.
Icy land and icy sky met in a trap, a trap that held him fast; and over
all, vast, titanic, terrible, the Spirit of the Wild seemed to brood. It
laughed at him, a laugh of derision, of mockery, of callous gloating
triumph. Locasto shuddered. Then night came and he built another giant
fire.

Again he bolted down some roasted muckluck. Overhead the stars glittered
vindictively. They were green and blue and red, and they had spiny rays
like starfish on which they danced. This night he had to make tremendous
efforts to keep from sleeping. Several times he drowsed forward, and
almost fell into the fire. As he crouched there his beard was singeing
and his face scorched, but his back seemed as if it was cased in ice.
Often he would turn and warm it at the fire, but not for long. He hated
to face the terror of the silence and the dark, the shadow where waited
Death. Better the crackling cheer of the spruce flame.

At dawn the sky was leaden and the cold less despotic. Stretching
interminably ahead was that lonely snowshoe trail. Locasto was puzzled.

"Where in creation is the little devil going to, anyway?" he said,
knitting his brows. "I figured he'd make direct for Dawson, but he's
either changed his mind or got a wrong steer. By Heavens, that's it--the
little varmint's lost his way."

Locasto had an Indian's unerring sense of location.

"I guess I can't afford to follow him any more," he reflected. "I've
gone too far already. I'm all petered out. I'll have to let him go in
the meantime. It's save yourself, Jack Locasto, while there's yet time.
Me for Dawson."

He struck off almost at right angles to the trail he had been following,
over a low range of hills. It was evil going, and as he broke through
the snow-crust mile after wearing mile, he felt himself grow weaker and
weaker. "Buck up, old man," he adjured himself fiercely. "You've got to
fight, fight."

There was a strange stillness in the air, not the natural stillness of
the Wild, but an unhealthy one, as of a suspension of something, of a
vacuum, of bated breath. It was curiously full of terror. More and more
he felt like a trapped animal, caught in a vast cage. The sky to the
north was glooming ominously. Every second the horizon grew blacker,
more bodeful, and Locasto stared at it, with a sudden quake at his
heart.

"Blizzard, by thunder!" he gasped.

Was that a breath of wind that stung his cheek? Was it a snowflake that
drifted along with it? Denser