Hager checked in at the hotel, and after a pleasant evening spent at one of Moose Gulch's two saloons, he returned and went to bed. He had a restless night. The hotel was warm enough, and the covers on the bed thick, but a strange feeling of cold seemed to envelop him. And though he emptied the bottle of whisky he had brought with him, the cold persisted.
He slept fitfully. Once he dreamed that he was tied, naked, to the sled and being driven by Cahill through a terrific snow storm. The cold was so intense it seared him like fire. He awoke, shivering, a vivid recollection of Cahill's gaunt, accusing features in his mind. Again he seemed to hear Cahill's dying promise.
"You aren't going to get away with this, Matt. I'm going to get you. I'm going to make you pay."
And now, shuddering with that weird cold that seemed to enclose him like a huge, vengeful fist, Hager wondered.
The cold remained with him in the days that followed. It not only remained. It grew more unbearable.
Hager began to have a persecuted feeling. The cold stayed with him wherever he went. Even near hot stoves, or in heated rooms, he felt chilled. No one else seemed to notice it. The cold seemed intended for him alone. More and more, he wondered about Cahill's threat.
He was materialistic. He didn't believe in ghosts. But he knew that he was being haunted by an unnatural cold that nobody else seemed able to feel.
He cast about for a method of escaping the cold. The obvious solution was to leave Moose Gulch, as he had intended all along. In his mind the cold was somehow connected with the settlement, through Cahill, who was buried there. A trip to one of the warm, southern regions in the States, he decided, should bring relief.
He sold the furs and with the money took passage on a plane that operated between the settlement and a large town some distance away. Continuing to travel by plane, he presently arrived in Seattle.
Still the cold remained with him. The miles he had put between Moose Gulch and himself hadn't done any good.