d that
other, even more acute ache, queer compound of fatigue and anger. These
two sensations swallowed up all else, and seemed to grow by what they
fed on.

The loaded sled was a nightmare. It weighed a thousand tons. The very
first afternoon out from Anvik, when in the desperate hauling and
tugging that rescued it from a bottomless snow-drift, the lashing
slipped, the load loosened, tumbled off, and rolled open, the Colonel
stood quite still and swore till his half-frozen blood circulated
freely again. When it came to repacking, he considered in detail the
items that made up the intolerable weight, and fell to wondering which
of them they could do without.

The second day out from Anvik they had decided that it was absurd,
after all, to lug about so much tinware. They left a little saucepan
and the extra kettle at that camp. The idea, so potent at Anvik, of
having a tea-kettle in reserve--well, the notion lost weight, and the
kettle seemed to gain.

Two pairs of boots and some flannels marked the next stopping-place.

On the following day, when the Boy's rifle kept slipping and making a
brake to hold back the sled, "I reckon you'll have to plant that rifle
o' yours in the next big drift," said the Colonel; "one's all we need,
anyway."

"One's all you need, and one's all I need," answered the Boy stiffly.

But it wasn't easy to see immediate need for either. Never was country
so bare of game, they thought, not considering how little they hunted,
and how more and more every faculty, every sense, was absorbed in the
bare going forward.

The next time the Colonel said something about the uselessness of
carrying two guns, the Boy flared up: "If you object to guns, leave
yours."

This was a new tone for the Boy to use to the Colonel.

"Don't you think we'd better hold on to the best one?"

Now the Boy couldn't deny that the Colonel's was the better, but none
the less he had a great affection for his own old 44 Marlin, and the
Colonel shouldn't assume that he had the right to dictate. This
attitude of the "wise elder" seemed out of place on the trail.

"A gun's a necessity. I haven't brought along any whim-whams."

"Who has?"

"Well, it wasn't me that went loadin' up at Anvik with fool
thermometers and things."

"Thermometer! Why, it doesn't weigh--"

"Weighs something, and it's something to pack; frozen half the time,
too. And when it isn't, what's the good of havin' it hammered into us
how near we are