His eyes were almost shut, but he drew himself together with a great effort, and added desperately: “No sleep. If I sleep it is all smash. Man say me I can get Askatoon by dat time from here, if I go queeck way across lak’—it is all froze now, dat lak’—an’ down dat Foxtail Hills. Is it so, ma’m’selle?”
“By the ‘quick’ way if you can make it in time,” she said; “but it is no way for the stranger to go. There are always bad spots on the ice—it is not safe. You could not find your way.”
“I mus’ get dere in time,” he said, desperately.
“You can’t do it—alone,” she said. “Do you want to risk all and lose?”
He frowned in self-suppression. “Long way, I no can get dere in time?” he asked.
She thought a moment. “No; it can’t be done by the long way. But there is another way—a third trail, the trail the Gover’ment men made a year ago when they came to survey. It is a good trail. It is blazed in the woods and staked on the plains. You cannot miss. But—but there is so little time.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “You cannot leave here much before sunrise, and—”
“I will leef when de moon rise, at eleven,” he interjected.
“You have had no sleep for two nights, and no food. You can’t last it out,” she said, calmly.
The deliberate look on his face deepened to stubbornness.
“It is my vow to my brudder—he is in purgatore. An’ I mus’ do it,” he rejoined, with an emphasis there was no mistaking. “You can show me dat way?”