the
ledger," he said aloud--and again he laughed.

He was in the big timber now. The tall, straight pines of the Appleton
holdings stretched away for a hundred miles, and formed a high wall on
either side of the tote-road, which bent to the contour of ridge and
swamp and crossed small creeks on rough log bridges or corduroy
causeways.

Gradually the stiffness left him, and his aching muscles limbered to
their work. His moccasins sank noiselessly into the soft snow as mile
after mile he traversed the broad ribbon of white.

At noon he camped, and over a tiny fire thawed out his bread and warmed
his salmon, which he washed down with copious drafts of snow-water.
Then he filled his pipe and blew great lungfuls of fragrant smoke into
the air as he rested with his back against a giant pine and watched the
fall of the snow.

During the last hour the character of the storm had changed. Cold, dry
pellets, hissing earthward had replaced the aimless dance of the
feathery flakes, and he could make out but dimly the opposite wall of
the rod-wide tote-road.

He returned the remains of his luncheon to his pack, eying with disgust
the heel of the loaf of hard bread and the soggy, red mass of sock-eye
that remained in the can.

"The first man that mentions canned salmon to me," he growled, "is
going to get _hurt_!"

The snow was ankle-deep when he again took the trail and lowered his
head to the sting of the wind-driven particles. On and on he plodded,
lifting his feet higher as the snow deepened. As yet, in his ignorance
of woodcraft, no thought of danger entered his mind. "It is harder
work, that is all," he thought; but, had he known it, his was a
situation that no woodsman wise in the ways of the winter trails would
have cared to face.

During the morning he had covered but fifteen of the forty miles which
lay between the old shack and Moncrossen's camp. Each minute added to
the difficulties of the journey, which, in the words of Daddy Dunnigan
was "a fine two walks for a good man," and, with the added hardship of
a heavy snowfall, would have been a man's-sized job for the best of
them equipped, as they would have been, with good grub and snowshoes.

Bill was forced to rest frequently. Not only were his softened muscles
feeling the strain--it was getting his wind, this steady bucking the
snow--but each time he again faced the storm and plowed doggedly
northward.

Darkness found him struggling knee-deep in the cold wh