g to take us out on the Barren
Grounds and lose us."

"If he can," supplemented Dick.

"Yes, if he can," agreed Sam. After a moment he went on, pursuing his
train of thought aloud, as was his habit.

"He's thinking he has more grub than we have; that's about what it
amounts to. He thinks he can tire us out. The chances are we'll find no
more game. We've got to go on what we have. He's probably got a
sledge-load;--and so have we;--but he has only one to feed, and three
dogs, and we have three and four dogs."

"That's all right; he's our Injun," replied Dick, voicing the instinct
of race superiority which, after all, does often seem to accomplish the
impossible. "It's too bad we have the girl with us," he added, after a
moment.

"Yes, it is," agreed Sam. Yet it was most significant that now it
occurred to neither of them that she might be abandoned.

The daily supply of provisions was immediately cut to a minimum, and
almost at once they felt the effects. The north demands hard work and
the greatest resisting power of the vitality; the vitality calls on the
body for fuel; and the body in turn insists on food. It is astonishing
to see what quantities of nourishment can be absorbed without apparent
effect. And when the food is denied, but the vitality is still called
upon, it is equally astonishing to see how quickly it takes its revenge.
Our travellers became lean in two days, dizzy in a week, tired to the
last fibre, on the edge of exhaustion. They took care, however, not to
step over that edge.

Sam Bolton saw to it. His was not only the bodily labour, but the mental
anxiety. His attitude was the tenseness of a helmsman in a heavy wind,
quivering to the faintest indication, ready to give her all she will
bear, but equally ready to luff this side of disaster. Only his equable
mind could have resisted an almost overpowering impulse toward sporadic
bursts of speed or lengthening of hours. He had much of this to repress
in Dick. But on the other hand he watched zealously against the needless
waste of even a single second. Every expedient his long woods life or
his native ingenuity suggested he applied at once to the problem of the
greatest speed, the least expenditure of energy to a given end, the
smallest consumption of food compatible with the preservation of
strength. The legitimate travel of a day might amount to twenty or
thirty miles. Sam added an extra five or ten to them. And that five or
ten he drew from th