"I can find nothing wrong," Lane said at last.
"Considering that you came across the man lying frozen after one of the worst storms you remember, what did you expect to find?" Harding asked.
"Well," the sergeant answered dryly, "it's my duty to make investigations. Though I didn't think it likely, there might have been a knife cut or a bullet hole. One of you had better bring up the sled. We can't break this ground without dynamite, but there are some loose rocks along the foot of the spur."
The sled was brought and Clarke was gently placed on it, wrapped in his fur coat. Then they took the traces and started for the ridge, where they built up a few stones above the hollow in which they laid him. It was quite dark when they had finished, and Lane made a gesture of relief.
"Well," he said, "that's done, and he'll lie safely there. Rough on him, but it's a hard country and many a good man has left his bones in it. I guess we'll get back to camp."
They crossed the snow in silence, trailing the empty sled, and for a while after they reached camp nobody spoke. Lane sat near the fire, where the light fell on the book in which he wrote with a pencil held awkwardly in his mittened hand, while Blake watched him and mused. He had no cause to regret Clarke's death, but he felt some pity for the man. Gifted with high ability, he had, through no fault of his own, been driven out of a profession in which he was keenly interested, and made an outcast. His subsequent life had been a hard and evil one, but it had ended in a tragic manner; and this was made all the more impressive because Blake and his companions had narrowly escaped the same fate. In spite of the cheerful fire, the camp had a lonely air, and Blake shivered as he glanced at the gleaming snow and the dusky trees that shut it in. There was something in the desolate North that daunted him.
Harding's reflections also centered on the dead man, and he had food for thought. There was a mystery to be explained. He imagined that he had a clue to it in his pocket, though he could not follow it up for the present. He waited with some anxiety until Lane closed his book.
"Now," said the sergeant, "there are one or two points I want explained, and as you know the man, it's possible that you can help me. How did he come to be here with only about three days' rations?"
"I can answer that," said Harding. "He was in the habit of staying at the Indian village we told you of. We saw tracks coming from it when we were there the day before the blizzard began."
"A white man's tracks? Why did you go to the village?"