“‘You’ll blow up if you don’t slow down, Nevins,’ I said once, but he only made an irritable reply and kept right on.
“I began to be worried. If he did break down I would be in a nasty fix. I’d seen snow madness before and knew what it was. That night I fairly forced him to halt. He was getting so crazy that he wanted to keep on in the dark, but I stuck out at that and he finally quieted down. Yet every now and then as we ate our sough-dough flap-jacks and gulped down our tea before turning in, I saw him keep looking back along the trail we’d come, as if he was scared somebody or something was coming after him to take him back to that shack.
“The next day we mushed on, Nevins still in the lead. We were due at the Lake that night, but I began to doubt if Nevins would make it. He started to talk and mutter to himself, and finally he turned around on me and asked me if I heard anything coming after us down the trail. I laughed the thing off as best I could, but I tell you it’s no joke being out in those wilds with a snow-crazed man, especially when he has a rifle, and maybe might take a crazy notion to try his marksmanship in your direction! I watched Nevins mighty close, you can bet.
“At noon we stopped and ate a half frozen meal, with Nevins staring back up the trail. As we resumed our march he was still muttering to himself and I noticed that he was fumbling with his rifle in a way that was not at all reassuring. I tried to get him to give it to me, making the excuse that it would lighten his load. He looked at me cunningly.
“‘I half believe that you’re in league with those fellows that want to take me back to that shack,’ says he, in a way that made me feel sick, for I knew then that he was crazy, sure enough—and me alone with an armed maniac and miles from any human being!”
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE TROOPER’S STORY.