"Not sure am I that he was not already here before we passed this way," said Polaris.
"But wouldn't the dogs have found him on the way in, in that case?" persisted Wright.
"It was hereabouts that we did meet the bear when we entered Sardanes," replied Polaris. "At that time the dogs had noses only for the scent of their enemy, and might have passed a hundred corpses and given no sign. That poor fellow back yonder might have lain in his snow bed all unsuspected. He might have been there for months. The snow and the cold would have kept the bones as we found them. How it came about that a man from the outer world did penetrate the wilderness to Sardanes, and then was slain in her very portals, passes my comprehension."
As the two teams passed swiftly along the reaches of the Hunters' Road, Zenas Wright noticed that his younger companion, running with the sledge, hesitated often, and cast many a keen glance along the path they followed. Once or twice, Polaris halted the animals entirely, while he knelt in the snow to scrutinize intently manifestations which he seemed to find there, but which were beyond the ken of the scientist. His face grew thoughtful, and there was a shadow in his amber eyes.
"What is it, son?" queried Wright at length, when the actions of Polaris had aroused a curiosity which the younger man did not volunteer to satisfy.
"I know not yet," Polaris answered; "and would not say the thing I think until I am wholly sure."
"Has it something to do with the corpse we found back there?"
"Aye, much perhaps," and the son of the snows relapsed into a moody silence that was strange to him.
At their first camping spot, well out near the end of the Hunters' Road, Polaris left Minos standing his turn as sentinel, and, while the old man and the girl slept, he went forward along the way alone. He was absent for more than two hours. He returned with overcast countenance, and without a word as to his explorations, crawled into his sleeping bag. For a long time he lay staring out across the surrounding snows before he closed his eyes for a few hours of slumber. When he awoke, Zenas Wright was on watch beside him.