“Ye see, ye're pop'lar with us,” Connick went on. “Ye can be as friendly with us as tho we was your brothers, but ye don't want to try any shenanigan trick like dodgin' away. We've been told to take you to Number 7 camp, and to that camp ye're goin'. So understandin' that we'll move. There's a snack waitin' here for us at the carry camp, and then for the uptrail.” The men moved along, taking Parker with them in the center of the group.
“How far is it to Number 7?” the young man inquired, despondently.
“They call it fifty miles from the other end of the carry. Ye needn't walk a step if ye don't want to. There's a moose sled an' plenty of men to haul ye.”
After a breakfast of hot beans, biscuits and steaming tea at the camp, the procession moved. Parker was wrapped in tattered bunk blankets and installed in state on a long, narrow sledge. He was given the option of getting off and walking whenever he needed the exercise to warm himself.
The march was brisk all that day, for the brawny woodsmen followed the snowy trail unflaggingly. After the six miles of the carry tote-road, their way led up the crooked West Branch on the ice. There were detours where the open waters roared down rough gorges fast enough to dodge the chilling hand of Jack Frost; there were broad dead waters where the river widened into small lakes. Parker was oppressed by the nervous dread of one who enters a strange new country and faces a danger toward which a fate stronger than he is pressing him.
At noon they ate a lunch beside a crackling fire which warmed the cooked provisions they had brought from the carry camp.
Parker walked during the afternoon to ease his cold-stiffened limbs. Toward dusk the party left the river and turned into a tote-road that writhed away under snow-laden spruces and hemlocks, coiled its way about rocky hummocks, and curved in “whip-lashes” up precipitous hillsides. There was not a break in the forest that stretched away on either hand.
Late in the evening they saw in a valley below them a group of log huts, their snowy roofs silvered by the moonlight. Yellow gleams from the low windows showed that the camp was occupied.
“That's the Sourdanheunk baitin'-place,” Connick explained, in answer to a question from his captive. “One o' Ward's tote-team hang-ups an' feedin'-places.”
The cook, a sallow, tall man encased in a dirty canvas shroud of an apron, was apparently expecting the party. More beans, more biscuits, more steaming tea—and then a bunk was spread for Parker. His previous night of vigil and his day spent in the wind had benumbed his faculties, and he speedily forgot his fears and his bitter resentment in profound slumber.