"He take a gun and a blanket, and moose meat from the fire; he catch a horse and ride west."
"And you let him go!" exclaimed Jack.
"Ascota is not a man like us," the young man muttered. "He does what he likes."
"More woman's talk!" cried Jack. "Are there any men among you? Come with me, and I'll show you stronger magic than Ascota's."
Some of the men affected to smile contemptuously as at an idle boaster. None moved to follow him. The obstinacy of their terror faced Jack like a wall, and he saw the futility of trying to move it.
He cursed them roundly. "I'll go alone then," he cried. "Bring me the best horse there is. I'll pay."
They shrugged as much as to say: "Let him, as long as he pays." One went to get the horse. In five minutes Jack was pounding the trail again.
Beyond the village the valley narrowed, and the roar of the plunging stream rose from the bottom of it. The bordering hills rapidly became steeper and higher. The trail did not follow the course of the river, but found an easier route along the face of the hills a hundred feet or so above. The sides of the hills had been burned over, here, and the forest was only a wilderness of naked, charred sticks. Many of these had fallen in the trail, making slow going for the horse. Occasionally the little river paused for a while in its headlong descent to wander back and forth through a green meadow. The trail came down to cross these easy places, and it was only here that Jack could extend his horse.
The plain tracks of Jean Paul's horse led him on. Jack could read that the breed was riding recklessly and distancing him steadily mile by mile, but he would not on that account risk his own horse's legs through the down timber. "I'll get him," he said to himself coolly, with the terrible singleness of purpose of which he was capable. In such a mood he was no longer a man, but an engine.
Jack had come across the mountains from Fort Erskine by this trail, and he knew it well. It was evidently for Fort Erskine, where he was not well known, that Jean Paul was making. Ahead, through the forest of bare sticks that hemmed him in, Jack could see the gateway to the mountains, the magnificent limestone pile of Mount Darwin on the right. He had worked around the base of Darwin, and all this was familiar ground.