"I sink we shall meet again," were his last words.
"What does he mean?" asked the Colonel, a little high and mightily. "What plan has he got for a meeting?"
"Same plan as you've got, I s'pose. I believe you both call it 'Heaven.'"
The Holy Cross thermometer had registered twenty degrees below zero, but the keen wind blowing down the river made it seem more like forty below. When they stopped to lunch, they had to crouch down behind the sled to stand the cold, and the Boy found that his face and ears were badly frost-bitten. The Colonel discovered that the same thing had befallen the toes of his left foot. They rubbed the afflicted members, and tried not to let their thoughts stray backwards. The Jesuits had told them of an inhabited cabin twenty-three miles up the river, and they tried to fix their minds on that. In a desultory way, when the wind allowed it, they spoke of Minóok, and of odds and ends they'd heard about the trail. They spoke of the Big Chimney Cabin, and of how at Anvik they would have their last shave. The one subject neither seemed anxious to mention was Holy Cross. It was a little "marked," the Colonel felt; but he wasn't going to say the first word, since he meant to say the last.
About five o'clock the gale went down, but it came on to snow. At seven the Colonel said decidedly: "We can't make that cabin to-night."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm not going any further, with this foot—" He threw down the sled-rope, and limped after wood for the fire.
The Boy tilted the sled up by an ice-hummock, and spread the new canvas so that it gave some scant shelter from the snow. Luckily, for once, the wind how grown quite lamb-like—for the Yukon. It would be thought a good stiff breeze almost anywhere else.
Directly they had swallowed supper the Colonel remarked: "I feel as ready for my bed as I did Saturday night."
Ah! Saturday night—that was different. They looked at each other with the same thought.