It was desperate enough even to thrill Hell-Camp Reivers. For probably never did born adventurer set forth of his own free will on a more deadly, more hopeless-looking trail. As he sat on the rock there in the Dead Lands, Reivers was in better condition than on his flight from Cameron-Dam Camp to this extent: the bullet-hole in his shoulder was healed, and, he had recuperated from the fever brought on by exposure and exhaustion. That was all. He was still the bare man with empty hands. He possessed nothing in the world but the clothes he stood in, the food on his back and the gift snow-shoes on his feet.
He had not even a knife that might be called a weapon, for the case-knife that old MacGregor had given him upon parting could scarcely be reckoned such. In this condition he was setting forth—first, to find a cunningly hidden mine; second, to take it and keep it for his own from one Shanty Moir, who treated his henchmen like dogs and was looked up to as a chieftain.
The Snow-Burner lived again as he contemplated the possibilities of a clash with Moir. If what the MacGregors had said was true, Shanty Moir was a boss man himself. And as instinctively and eagerly as one ten-pronged buck tears straight through timber, swamp and water to battle with another buck whose deep-voiced challenge proclaims him similarly a giant, so Reivers was going toward Shanty Moir.
He leaped to his feet, with flashing eyes, at the thought of what was coming. Then he remembered his weakened condition and sat down again. For the immediate present, until his full strength returned, he must make craft take the place of strength.
When he was ready to start again, Reivers took his bearings from the sun, it being a clear day, and laid his trail as straight toward the northwest as the formation of the Dead Lands would allow. He slept that night by a hot spring. A tiny rivulet ran unfrozen from the spring southward down into the maze of barren stone, a thread of dark, steaming water, wandering through the white, frozen snow.
Had he been a little less tired with the day’s march Reivers might have paid more attention to this phenomenon that evening. In the morning he awoke with such eagerness to be on toward his adventure that he marched off without bestowing on the stream more than a casual glance. And later he came to curse his carelessness.
Bearing steadily toward the northwest, his course lay in the Dead Lands for the greater part of the day. Shortly before sundown he saw with relief that ahead the rocks and ridges gave way to the flat tundra, with small clumps of stunted willows dotting the flatness, like tiny islands in a sea of snow.
Reivers quickened his pace. Out on the tundra he hurried straight to the nearest bunch of willows. Even at a distance of several rods the chewed white branches of the willows told him their story, and he gave vent to a shout of relief. The caribou had been feeding there. The Chippewas lived on the caribou in Winter. He had only to follow the trail of the animals and he would soon run across the moccasin tracks of his friends, the Indians.
Luck favoured him more than he hoped for. At his shout there was a crash in a clump of willows a hundred yards ahead and a bull caribou lumbered clumsily into the open. At the sight of him the beast snorted loudly and turned and ran. From right and left came other crashes, and in the gathering dusk the herd which had been stripping the willows fled in the wake of the sentinel bull, their ungainly gait whipping them out of sight and hearing in uncanny fashion.
Reivers smiled. The camp of Tillie’s people would not be far from the feeding ground of the caribou. He ate his cold supper, crawled into the shelter of the willows and went to sleep.