It was slow work and heavy to lug that load alone. Jessie went ahead, but her weight was not enough to crush the loose particles to any degree of firmness. For every quarter mile gained we sat down upon the load to rest, sweat standing in drops upon my face and freezing in pellets as it stood. And at one of these halts I fell to studying the small oval face framed in the parka-hood beside me. The sad, tired look of it cut me. There was a stout heart, to be sure, in that small body. But it was killing work for men—I gritted my teeth at the mesh of circumstance.
“If you were only out of this,” I murmured.
I looked up quickly at a crunching sound, and there was Barreau, empty-handed. I shall never forget the glare in his eyes at sight of me standing there with one hand resting lightly on her shoulder. There was no word said. He took up the rope with me, and we went on.
“Where in the name of Heaven are you heading for?” something spurred me to ask of him. The tone was rasping, but I could not make it otherwise.
“To the Peace,” he snapped back. “Then west through the mountains, down the Fraser, toward the Sound country. D’ye think I intend to walk into the arms of the Police?”
“You might do worse,” some demon of irritability prompted me to snarl.
He looked back at me over his shoulder, slackening speed. For a moment I thought he would turn on me then and there, and my shoulder-muscles stiffened. There was a thrill in the thought. But he only muttered:
“Get a grip on yourself, man.”
Just at the first lowering of dusk, in my peering over Barreau’s shoulder I spotted the shovel-antlers of a moose beside a clump of scraggy willows. I dropped the rope, snatched for my rifle and fired as Barreau turned to see what I was about. I had drawn a bead on the broad side of him as he made the first plunge, and he dropped.
“Well, that’s meat,” Barreau said. “And it means camp.”