at day the trail, after many a kink and seeming break, led into
a great dense thicket of brittle, quaking asp. Yan knew that the Stag
was there to lie at rest. The deer went in up-wind, of course. His
eyes and ears would watch his trail, and his nose would guard in
front, so Yan went in at one side, trusting to get a shot. With a very
agony of care he made his way, step by step, and, after many minutes,
surely found the track, still leading on. Another lengthy crawl, with
nerves at tense, and then the lad thought he heard a twig snapped
behind him, though the track was still ahead. And after long he found
it true. Before lying down the Stag had doubled back, and while Yan
had thought him still ahead, he was lying far behind, so had gotten
wind of the man and now was miles away.

Once more into the unknown north away, till cold, black night came
down; then Yan sought out a sheltered spot and made a tiny, red-man's
fire. As Chaska had taught him long ago--'Big fire for fool.'

When the lad curled up to sleep he felt a vague wish to turn three
times like a dog, and a well-defined wish that he had fur on his face
and a bushy tail to lay around his freezing hands and feet, for it was
a night of northern frost. Old Peboan was stalking on the snow. The
stars seemed to crackle, so one could almost hear. The trees and earth
were bursting with the awful frost. The ice on a near lake was rent
all night by cracks that went whooping from shore to shore; and down
between the hills there poured the cold that burns.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

A prairie-wolf came by in the night, but he did not howl or treat Yan
like an outsider now. He gave a gentle, doglike '_Woof, woof_,' a sort
of 'Oho! so you have come to it at last,' and passed away. Toward
morning the weather grew milder, but with the change there came a
driving snow. The track was blotted out. Yan had heeded nothing else,
and did not know where he was. After travelling an aimless mile or two
he decided to make for Pine Creek, which ought to lie southeastward.
But which way was southeast? The powdery snow was driven along through
the air, blinding, stinging, burning. On all things near it was like
smoke, and on farther things, a driving fog. But he made for a quaking
asp grove, and there, sticking through the snow, he found a crosier
golden-rod, dead and dry, but still faithfully delivering its
message, 'Yon is the north.' With course corrected, on he went, and,
whene