"I'm planning a longer dash than I had in mind at first," he told her. "It's important——" he hesitated, and a lie came to his lips. But it was not such a falsehood as would be marked, in ineffaceable letters, against him on the Book of Judgement. He spoke to save the girl any false hopes. "It's about my mine," he said, "and I'll not likely be back before to-morrow night. It might take even longer than that. Would you be afraid to stay alone?"
"There's nothing to be afraid of here," the girl replied. "But it will be awfully lonesome without you. But if you think you've got a real clew, I wouldn't ask you to stay."
"It's a real clew." The man spoke softly, rather painfully. She wondered why he did not show more jubilation or excitement. "You've got your pistol and you can bolt the door. I've got plenty of wood cut. There's kindling too—and you can light a fire in the morning. If you put a big log on to-night you'll have glowing coals in the morning. It will be cold getting up, and I wish I could be here to build your fire. But I don't think I can."
She gave him a smile and was startled sober in the middle of it. All at once she saw that the man was pale. He had, then, found a clew of real importance. "Go ahead, of course," she told him. "We'll fix some lunch for you right away."
He took a piece of dried moose meat, a can of beans and another of marmalade, and these, with a number of dried biscuits, would comprise his lunch. "Be careful of yourself," he told her at parting. "If I don't get back to-morrow, don't worry. And pray for me."
She told him she would, but she did not guess the context of the prayer his own heart asked. His prayer was for failure, rather than success.
Following his own tracks, he went directly back to the mysterious snowshoe trail. He followed swiftly down it, anxious to know his fate at the first possible instant. He saw that the trail was fresh, made that morning; he had every reason to think that he could overtake the man who had made it within a few hours.
He was not camped on the Yuga,—whoever had come mushing through the silences that morning. From the river to that point where he had found the tracks was too great a distance for any musher to cover in the few hours since dawn. There was nothing to believe but that the stranger's camp lay within a few miles of his own. He decided, from his frequent stops, that the man had been hunting; there was nothing to indicate that he was following a trap line. The frequent tracks in the snow, however, indicated an unusually good tracking country. He wondered if strangers—Indians, most likely—had come to poach on his domain.
He did not catch up with the traveler in the snow. The man had mushed swiftly. But shortly after the noon hour his keen eyes saw a wisp of smoke drifting through the trees, and his heart leaped in his breast. He pushed on, emerging all at once upon a human habitation.
It was a lean-to, rather than a cabin. Some logs had been used in its construction, but mostly its walls were merely frames, thatched heavily with spruce boughs. A fire smoldered in front. And his heart leaped with indescribable relief when he saw that neither of the two men that were squatted in the lean-to mouth was the stranger that had passed his camp six years before.