of a trail. No chechakoes are safe in there without a
guide. I, Baptiste, know."

"Selfridge and his party went through a week ago. I can follow the
tracks they left."

"But if it rains, Monsieur, the tracks will vaneesh, n'est ce pas? Lose
the way, and the little singing folk will swarm in clouds about Monsieur
while he stumbles through the swamp."

Elliot hesitated for the better part of a day, then came to an impulsive
decision. He knew the evil fame of Fifty-Mile Swamp--that no trail in
Alaska was held to be more difficult or dangerous. He knew too what a
fearful pest the mosquitoes were. Peter had told him a story of how he
and a party of engineers had come upon a man wandering in the hills,
driven mad by mosquitoes. The traveler had lost his matches and had been
unable to light smudge fires. Day and night the little singing devils
had swarmed about him. He could not sleep. He could not rest. Every
moment for forty-eight hours he had fought for his life against them.
Within an hour of the time they found him the man had died a raving
maniac.

But Elliot was well equipped with mosquito netting and with supplies. He
had a reliable map, and anyhow he had only to follow the tracks left by
the Selfridge party. He turned his back upon the big river and plunged
into the wilderness.

There came a night when he looked up into the stars of the deep, still
sky and knew that he was hundreds of miles from any other human being.
Never in all his life had he been so much alone. He was not afraid, but
there was something awesome in a world so empty of his kind. Sometimes
he sang, and the sound of his voice at first startled him. It was like
living in a world primeval, this traverse of a land so void of all the
mechanism that man has built about him.

The tracks of the Selfridge party grew fainter after a night of rain.
More rain fell, and they were obliterated altogether.

Gordon fished. He killed fresh game for his needs. Often he came on the
tracks of moose and caribou. Sometimes, startled, they leaped into view
quite close enough for a shot, but he used his rifle only to meet his
wants. A huge grizzly faced him on the trail one afternoon, growled its
menace, and went lumbering into the big rocks with awkward speed.

The way led through valley and morass, across hills and mountains. It
wandered in a sort of haphazard fashion through a sun-bathed universe
washed clean of sordidness and meanness. Always, as he pushed forw