Blocks were cut from the surface of the hard crusted snow and packed closely about the body. Snow was melted at the fire and the blocks soaked with water, which froze almost instantly, cementing the whole into a solid mass of opaque ice. In the same manner, the igloo was sealed, and the body of Carlson was protected both from the fangs of prowling beasts and the ravages of time. From the trunk of a young spruce, Waseche Bill fashioned a rude cross, into which Connie burned deep the name:
SVEN CARLSON
DIED JAN. 10-19—.
The cross was planted firmly and, having completed the task to their satisfaction, the two ate supper in silence and sought their sleeping bags.
Dogs were harnessed next morning by the little light of the stars, and long before the first faint streak of the late winter dawn greyed the north-east, the outfit swung onto the trail—the year-old trail of Carlson, the man who found gold.
Before passing from sight around a point of the spruce thicket, they halted the sleds for a last look at the solitary igloo. There, in the shifting glow of the paling aurora, the little cross stood out sharp and black against its unending background of dead white snow, and below it showed the rounded outline of the low mound that was the fitting sepulchre of this man of the North.
CHAPTER XII
IN THE HEART OF THE SILENT LAND
Waseche Bill and his little partner followed blindly the directions upon Carlson's map, which led them across snow as trackless and unscarred as the day it fell.