. Do not
forget the whisky."

Having swallowed a stiff glass of the whisky, he went carefully through
the medicine chest, now and again putting aside, with definite purpose,
certain bottles and vials. Then he set to work on the food, attempting a
crude analysis. He had not been unused to the laboratory in his college
days and was possessed of sufficient imagination to achieve results with
his limited materials. The condition of tetanus, which had marked his
paroxysms, simplified matters, and he made but one test. The coffee
yielded nothing; nor did the beans. To the biscuits he devoted the
utmost care. Amos, who knew nothing of chemistry, looked on with steady
curiosity. But Jees Uck, who had boundless faith in the white man's
wisdom, and especially in Neil Bonner's wisdom, and who not only knew
nothing but knew that she knew nothing watched his face rather than his
hands.

Step by step he eliminated possibilities, until he came to the final
test. He was using a thin medicine vial for a tube, and this he held
between him and the light, watching the slow precipitation of a salt
through the solution contained in the tube. He said nothing, but he saw
what he had expected to see. And Jees Uck, her eyes riveted on his face,
saw something too,--something that made her spring like a tigress upon
Amos, and with splendid suppleness and strength bend his body back across
her knee. Her knife was out of its sheaf and uplifted, glinting in the
lamplight. Amos was snarling; but Bonner intervened ere the blade could
fall.

"That's a good girl, Jees Uck. But never mind. Let him go!"

She dropped the man obediently, though with protest writ large on her
face; and his body thudded to the floor. Bonner nudged him with his
moccasined foot.

"Get up, Amos!" he commanded. "You've got to pack an outfit yet to-night
and hit the trail."

"You don't mean to say--" Amos blurted savagely.

"I mean to say that you tried to kill me," Neil went on in cold, even
tones. "I mean to say that you killed Birdsall, for all the Company
believes he killed himself. You used strychnine in my case. God knows
with what you fixed him. Now I can't hang you. You're too near dead as
it is. But Twenty Mile is too small for the pair of us, and you've got
to mush. It's two hundred miles to Holy Cross. You can make it if
you're careful not to over-exert. I'll give you grub, a sled, and three
dogs. You'll be as safe as if you were in ja