He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and stood up, stretching and yawning.
"Right now I want sleep," he said.
When dawn came the next morning, it was snowing hard, and for a week they made poor progress, with a bitter gale driving the flakes in their faces. Each day the distance covered steadily lessened, and rations were cut down accordingly. Harding's leg was getting sore, but he did not mean to speak of it unless it became necessary. They were, however, approaching the neighborhood of the Indian village and Blake began to speculate upon the probability of their finding its inhabitants at home. He understood that the Stonies wandered about, and he realized with uneasiness that it would be singularly unfortunate if they were away on a hunting trip.
At last, after spending all of one blustering day laboriously climbing the rough but gently rising slope of a long divide, they camped on a high tableland, and lay awake, too cold to sleep, beside a sulky, greenwood fire. In the morning it was difficult to get up on their feet, but as the light grew clearer, the prospect ahead of them seized their attention. The hill summits were wrapped in leaden cloud, but a valley opened up below. It was wider and deeper than any they had come across since leaving the factory, the bottom looked unusually level, and it ran roughly south.
They gazed at it in silence for a time; and then Harding spoke.
"I've an idea that this is the valley where Blake fell sick, and it's going to straighten things out for us if I'm right."
"That's so," Benson agreed, "We would be sure of striking the Stony village, and we could afterward follow the low ground right down to the river. With the muskegs frozen solid, it ought to make an easy road."
Blake was conscious of keen satisfaction; but there was still a doubt.
"We'll know more about it after another march," he said.
No snow fell that morning, and as their packs were ominously light they made good speed across the hill benches and down a ravine where they scrambled among the boulders of a frozen creek. It was a gray day without the rise in temperature that often accompanies cloudiness, and the light was strangely dim. Rocks and pines melted into one another at a short distance, and leaden haze obscured the lower valley. Blake was becoming sure, however, that it was the one they had traveled up and, dispensing with the usual noon halt, they pushed on as fast as possible. All were anxious to set their doubts at rest, for there was now a prospect of obtaining food and shelter in a few days; but they recognized no landmarks, and with the approach of evening the frost grew very keen. The haze drew in closer, and the scattered pines they passed wailed drearily in a rising wind. The men were tired, but they could see no suitable camping place, and they pushed on, looking for thicker timber.