“However, I put the best face I could on the matter and even tried to talk cheerfully to Nevins. But he would have none of my conversation and zig-zagged along on his snow shoes with his queer, swinging gait in the same silent way. It began to grow dusk, and I saw that we should never make the lake that night. I halted Nevins and told him so.
“He gave an odd kind of laugh.
“‘Not make it? Man alive. I’m going to make it’ he grated out in an odd, rasping sort of a voice.
“‘Don’t talk like a fool,’ said I. ‘Come, here’s a place under this ledge that’ll make a good camp, and bright and early we’ll hit the trail again.’
“He whipped round on me with blazing eyes. If ever a demon shone out of a man’s optics it blazed out of his.
“‘I’m going on, I tell you,’ he snarled, ‘and what’s more, you’re going with me.’
“I’ve been in some pretty tight places, but take my word for it, right then I began to think that I hadn’t begun to know what a tight corner was. I could see by the way that poor crazy Nevins gripped his rifle that he meant to have company on his night ‘mush,’ even if he had to shoot him to get it. I felt as if somebody had dropped a chunk of ice down my back.
“‘All right, Nevins,’ I said, ‘I’ll go along. Don’t get excited.’
“‘I’m not excited,’ he said. And then he added, ‘It’s only that they’ll get us if we don’t keep on going.’
“‘Who’s them?’ I inquired.