e
Canadian snowshoes, the smooth tracks of the skis, and demanded sharply:

"Which men wore the webs?"

"Them tennis racket things? MacKelvey and one of his thieves."

He looked at her wonderingly. What difference did that make? But
Wanda took no time for explanations. She was thinking swiftly that
MacKelvey would be the man to make the arrest, that the others would
accommodate their gait to his, that upon a crust like this the Canadian
shoes could make no such speed as a pair of skis.

"Tell mamma, no one else, where I have gone," she cried.

And, swinging about, she took the side of the knoll in a long sweep,
shot down into a hollow, rose upon the far side, crossed the trail that
the four men had made, seemed to Mr. Dart's staring eyes to be
balancing a moment upon a line where snow and sky met and then was gone
from him, dropping out of sight into the wilderness of snow.

"She's some game little kid," he moaned, shaking his head and making a
slow retreat back to the house. "But with them cutthroats an hour
ahead of her, she ain't got a show. Poor old Red."

But Wanda's heart was beating steadily now, her muscles were obeying
the calm command of her will, and she was telling herself resolutely
that she did have a chance. MacKelvey and Hume and the others would
see no imperative need for a wild burst of speed; they would travel
swiftly but they would not know that she was moving more swiftly behind
them. Up and down hill they would go step by step while she, following
the way she knew so well, the trails she had followed winter after
winter, would find the long slopes down which she would shoot like a
flash of light. It was more than possible that they would take over
two hours in making the trip; she must make it in less than an hour.

"If I had only come home half an hour sooner," she cried as she fought
her oblique way up a ridge she must top, "I could have laughed at them.
God be with me and I'll laugh at them yet!"

She was going too fast; she came to the crest of the ridge panting, her
heart beating wildly, her body shaking. She sought to relax her
muscles as she took the long racing ride down upon the far side. She
went more slowly as she climbed the next ridge. She was thinking
coolly now, she saw the need both of speed and of a conservation of
energy. She felt no fatigue from the trip of the forenoon; she had
rested long at the cave with Wayne; and yet she knew that unless she
saved her