Pete nodded. Joe made no response.
"Then you can find it, Pete. I haven't any idea where it is myself. It's only a day's march, and he's got it packed with grub. You hide out there, and the little food we have left in the cabin'll be enough to take us down there too—the woman and I—we'll follow your snowshoes tracks. Then we'll make it through to the Yuga from there. And if we have to, we can go over to a grizzly carcass I know of and cut off a few pounds of meat—but we won't have to. We'll join you at the Twenty-three Mile cabin to-morrow night."
Pete the breed looked doubtful. "Bear over—east?" he asked.
"Somewhere over there," Harold replied.
"Don't guess any bear meat left. Heard coyotes—hundred of 'em—over east. Pack of wolves came through too—sang song over there."
Harold could agree with him. If indeed the wolves and the coyotes had gathered—starving gray skulkers of the forest—the great skeleton would have been stripped clean by now. However, it didn't complicate his own problem. The Indians could get down to the Twenty-three Mile cabin with the morsel of food they had left—he and Virginia could follow their trail with the fragment of supplies remaining in Bill's cabin.
"You can go from there to the Yuga and hide out," Harold went on. "I'll go down to the recorder's office with the woman. Don't worry about her, I'll tell 'em that you were two Indians from the East Selkirks, give 'em a couple of false names and send 'em on a goose chase. It's simple as day and doesn't need any nerve. And if you've got it through your heads, I'm going back to the cabin."
They had it through their heads. The plan, as Harold said, was exceedingly simple. They digested it slowly, then nodded. But Pete had one more question—one that was wholly characteristic of his weasel soul.
"What do you want us to use?" he asked. "This?" He indicated the thin blade at his thigh. "Maybe use rifle?"
Harold's eyes looked drowsy when he answered. Something like a lust, a desire swept over him; this question of Pete's moved him in dark and evil ways. "Oh, I don't know," he replied. "It doesn't much matter——" He spoke in a strained, thick voice that was vaguely exciting to the two breeds. For a few seconds he seemed to stand listening, rather than in thought, and he continued his reply as if he were scarcely aware of his own words. It was as if a voice from the past was speaking through his lips. The words came with no conscious effort; rather were they the dread outpourings of an inherent fester in his soul. His father's blood was in the full ascendancy at last.