The sled was negotiating a bad piece of trail when it suddenly stopped, and she heard an ejaculation from behind her. She saw Jim step down and examine something black in the snow. She gave a little cry as he caught the black object 195 and pulled it up—it was a dead man, frozen as stiff as a board.
“Poor devil!” muttered Jim. “I guess he got caught in that wind.”
He searched through the pockets of the mackinaw coat, but found nothing that would act as a means to identification. He let the body fall and covered it with snow.
“Aren’t you going to bury him?”
He nodded and looked round him in expectant fashion.
“Must have a shack or a tent round about. He’s got no pack of any kind. If it was a tent, likely enough it’s a hundred miles away by now. If it was a shack it’ll be very useful—to us.”
She prayed it might be the latter. Anything was better than this mad wandering.
They found the shack ten minutes later, nestling in a hollow, with its chimney still smoking. They pulled up outside and went to investigate the home of the unfortunate stranger. It was a comfortable affair, containing two rooms and a small outhouse, plus a certain amount of rough furniture. In the corner of the 196 outer room was the ubiquitous Yukon stove, with a fryingpan on the top containing a much overdone “flapjack.” A pair of snow-shoes lay in a corner, and sundry articles of clothing were hanging on nails. In the next room was a camp-bed and more clothes, two bags of flour, one of beans, a few tins of canned meat, a rifle and a hundred cartridges—but no letters or information of any kind respecting its late owner.
“It’ll do,” said Jim. “It’ll be better than a tent, anyway.”
Angela agreed reluctantly. Somehow it seemed heartless to coolly take possession of this place, with its late owner lying dead but a bare mile away. It gave her an uncanny sensation as she glanced at all the little things that belonged to him, that his cold hands had touched but a few hours ago. She reflected that a year ago such an incident as this would have chilled her with horror. But apart from arousing a small amount of sentimentality it affected her now very little. It came as a shock to her to realize that fact—she was becoming as wild as this “cowpuncher” husband of hers, who even now was sallying forth with spade and ax to excavate a shallow grave in the frozen 197 earth, to save a man’s body from prowling wolves. And all without an atom of sentiment!