"No one else within two hundred miles of here—his partner crippled so he never could have found him if he tried, and he never would have tried—a few more hours and he would have been dead—we come along and find him—and he not only don't offer us a meal, but accuses us of stealing his marten—and offers to sell us moose meat—at two-bits a pound! I wish some of the men I know could have the handling of those birds for about a month!"
"Humph! If mos' w'ite men I know got to han'le um dey ain' goin' live no mont'—you bet!"
"Anyway," laughed the boy, "we've sure learned the difference between nerve and brass!"
CHAPTER V
THE PLAGUE FLAG IN THE SKY
It was nearly noon of the day following the departure of Connie Morgan and 'Merican Joe from the camp of the two chechakos.
The mountains had been left behind, and even the foothills had flattened to low, rolling ridges which protruded irregularly into snow-covered marshes among which the bed of the frozen river looped interminably. No breath of air stirred the scrub willows along the bank, upon whose naked branches a few dried and shrivelled leaves still clung.
'Merican Joe was travelling ahead breaking trail for his dogs and the boy saw him raise a mittened hand and brush at his cheek. A few minutes later the Indian thrashed his arms several times across his chest as though to restore circulation of the blood against extreme cold. But it was not cold. A moment later the boy brushed at his own cheek which stung disagreeably as though nipped by the frost. He glanced at the tiny thermometer that he kept lashed to the front of his toboggan. It registered zero, a temperature that should have rendered trailing even without the heavy parkas uncomfortably warm. Connie glanced backward toward the distant mountains that should have stood out clean-cut and distinct in the clear atmosphere, but they had disappeared from view although the sun shone dazzlingly bright from a cloudless sky. A dog whimpered uneasily, and Connie cracked his whip above the animal's head and noted that instead of the sharp snap that should have accompanied the motion, the sound reached his ears in a dull pop—noted, too, that the dogs paid no slightest heed to the sound, but plodded on methodically—slowly, as though they were tired. Connie was conscious of a growing lassitude—a strange heaviness that hardly amounted to weariness but which necessitated a distinct effort of brain to complete each muscle move.