"You will not find him," he said slowly in French; "but if you are determined to go, I will hunt with you. It is a big chance that we will not come back."
"I don't want you to go," objected Jan. "One will do as much as two, unless we search alone. I came your way to find if it had begun to snow before Dixon left."
"An hour after he had gone, you could not see your hand before your face," replied Ledoq, preparing his pack. "There is no doubt but that he circled out over Lac Bain. We will go that far together, and then search alone."
They went back over the mountain, and stopped when instinct told them that they were opposite the spruce forests of the lake. There they separated, Jan going as nearly as he could guess into the northwest, Ledoq trailing slowly and hopelessly into the south.
It was no great sacrifice for Jan, this struggle with the big snows for the happiness of Mélisse. What it was to Ledoq no man ever guessed or knew, for it was not until the late spring snows had gone that the people at Lac Bain found what the foxes and the wolves had left of him, far to the south.
Fearlessly Jan plunged into the white world of the lake. There was neither rock nor tree to guide him, for everywhere was the heavy ghost-raiment of the Indian god. The balsams were bending under it, the spruces were breaking into hunchback forms, the whole world was twisted in noiseless torture under its increasing weight. Out through the still terror of it all Jan's voice went in wild, echoing shouts. Now and then he fired his rifle, and always he listened long and intently. The echoes came back to him, laughing, taunting, and then each time fell the mirthless silence of the storm.
Day came, only a little lighter than the night. He crossed the lake, his snow-shoes sinking ankle-deep at every step, and once each half-hour he fired a single shot from his rifle. He heard shots to the south, and knew that it was Ledoq; each report coming to him more faintly than the last, until they had died away entirely.
Across the lake he struck the forest again, and his shouts echoed in futile inquiry in its weird depths. About him there was no sign of life, no sound except the faint fluttering of falling snow. Under five feet of this snow the four-footed creatures of the wilderness were snugly buried; close against the trunks of the spruces, sheltered within their tent-like coverings, the birds waited like lifeless things for the breaking of the storm.
At noon Jan stopped and ate his lunch. Then he went on, carrying his rifle always upon his right shoulder, so that the steps of his right leg would be shortened, and he would travel in a circle, as he believed Dixon had done.
The storm thickened with the falling of night, and he burrowed himself a great hole in the soft snow and filled it with balsam boughs for a bed. When he awakened, hours later, he stood up, and thrust out his head, and found himself buried to the arm-pits. With the aid of his broad snow-shoes he drew himself out, until he stood knee-deep in the surface.