ou game?"

For answer, Linday knocked out his pipe and began to pull on his damp
moccasins. Between them, and in few minutes, bending to the force of the
wind, the dogs were harnessed, camp broken, and the cooking outfit and
unused sleeping furs lashed on the sled. Then, through the darkness, for
a night of travel, they churned out on the trail Daw had broken nearly a
week before. And all through the night the Chinook roared and they urged
the weary dogs and spurred their own jaded muscles. Twelve hours of it
they made, and stopped for breakfast after twenty-seven hours on trail.

"An hour's sleep," said Daw, when they had wolfed pounds of straight
moose-meat fried with bacon.

Two hours he let his companion sleep, afraid himself to close his eyes.
He occupied himself with making marks upon the soft-surfaced, shrinking
snow. Visibly it shrank. In two hours the snow level sank three inches.
From every side, faintly heard and near, under the voice of the spring
wind, came the trickling of hidden waters. The Little Peco, strengthened
by the multitudinous streamlets, rose against the manacles of winter,
riving the ice with crashings and snappings.

Daw touched Linday on the shoulder; touched him again; shook, and shook
violently.

"Doc," he murmured admiringly. "You can sure go some."

The weary black eyes, under heavy lids, acknowledged the compliment.

"But that ain't the question. Rocky is clawed something scand'lous. As I
said before, I helped sew up his in'ards. Doc...." He shook the man,
whose eyes had again closed. "I say, Doc! The question is: can you go
some more?--hear me? I say, can you go some more?"

The weary dogs snapped and whimpered when kicked from their sleep. The
going was slow, not more than two miles an hour, and the animals took
every opportunity to lie down in the wet snow.

"Twenty miles of it, and we'll be through the gorge," Daw encouraged.
"After that the ice can go to blazes, for we can take to the bank, and
it's only ten more miles to camp. Why, Doc, we're almost there. And when
you get Rocky fixed up, you can come down in a canoe in one day."

But the ice grew more uneasy under them, breaking loose from the
shore-line and rising steadily inch by inch. In places where it still
held to the shore, the water overran and they waded and slushed across.
The Little Peco growled and muttered. Cracks and fissures were forming
everywhere as they battled on for the miles that each one of which m