“If only we could get another dog team and a good guide, we could run him down without trouble.”
“I’m not so certain of that, but anyhow I’d rather have the dogs than the guide. A blind man could follow this trail.”
After this they pushed on in silence, watching as they went the stealthy tracks of the wolverine following, like themselves, the unknown marauder of the night.
CHAPTER VI—STOPPING TO REST.
Large natures are apt to take heavy blows more calmly, at any rate so far as outward appearances are concerned, than smaller ones. The Dacre boys, broadened and deepened by their adventurous lives, were not as cast down over the disaster that had befallen them as might have been many lads less used to meeting hardships and difficulties and fighting them as American boys should.
Therefore it was that, keen as was their interest in the stake that lay ahead of them, they yet found time to notice the sights about them and to talk as they moved along over the snow much as they might have done under quite ordinary circumstances.
If anything, Jack had shown his anger and chagrin more perceptibly than Tom when the blow had first fallen. But now he was in as perfect command of his faculties as his elder brother. He was able even to crack a joke now and then with seeming indifference to the object of their journey and the perils that might lie in front of them, perhaps just around the next turn of the trail, for all that they knew.
As for Tom, following the calm, almost stoical way with which he had met the discovery of their loss, he had become possessed of an unconquerable desire to find the man who had robbed them and if possible hand him over to the authorities. Failing this, Tom found himself possessed of a grim, bulldog determination to make the man give up the spoils. As for the man himself, he felt no wish to punish him under those circumstances. That was for the law to do. The main thing was to get back the black fox’s skin, for he was sure the creature had been killed.
At about noontime Tom called a halt. Jack was for pressing right on without stopping to eat, but Tom would not allow this.
“It’s no use two fellows wearing themselves out,” he said; “we shall work all the better for having stopped to ‘fire up.’”