CHAPTER XI
ON THE DEAD MAN'S LONELY TRAIL
Connie Morgan pushed aside the flap of his sleeping bag and blinked sleepily into the blue-gray Arctic dawn. Far to the north-west, the thin rays of the belated winter sun pinked the edges of the ice god's chiselled peaks where the great white range guarded grimly the secrets of the man-feared Lillimuit.
The boy closed his eyes and pressed his face close against the warm fleece. Was it all a dream, he wondered vaguely—the crashing wall of the canyon—the trail of the white death—the blazing aurora—the search for the Tatonduk pass—the buried igloo, and the man who died? Were these things real? Or, was he still following the trail of Waseche Bill, with the unknown Lillimuit before him, and the men of Eagle behind?
Again his eyes opened and he chuckled aloud as he thought of the man called Joe, and Fiddle Face, and big Jim Sontag, and the others in the hotel at Eagle. It was not a dream. There, by the fire, was Waseche, the coffeepot was boiling with a low bubbly sound, and beyond was the round-topped igloo, its white side scarred by the sled-blocked entrance to the tunnel.
"What's so funny?" grinned Waseche as, frying pan in hand, he turned at the sound of the boy's laughter. "This heah mess we ah into ain't no joke, fah's I c'n see. Whateveh yo' laughin' at, anyhow?"
The boy wriggled from his sleeping bag and joined the man by the fireside, where the preparation of breakfast was well under way.
"Oh, nothing—I was just wondering what they thought, next morning—the men back in Eagle, who wouldn't let me come to you."