“That’s a danger signal!
“It means that the bottom of the river has begun to freeze. If you don’t make a quick landing you are soon hemmed in by ice too thick to row or paddle through, but too thin to walk on. You may be frozen before you can escape.
“Well, I’ve told you enough to let you see that life up here is not a bed of roses, but, as my uncle says, ‘it makes men’. At any rate, no mollycoddle could get along very well in a northern winter. But we are enjoying all of it—the rough and the smooth. We have each gained in weight—and eat!—Fatty Dawkins at school was a mere invalid compared to us!”
So closed Tom’s letter and, by the time it was finished, old Joe was ready to resume the trail. The storekeeper took charge of the boys’ mail, to be delivered to the dog-teams when the post came by.
CHAPTER XVI—COMING STORM.
It was after the noonday halt of the next day that the Indian’s prophecy of the coming snow was verified. All that morning they had pushed feverishly along under sullen skies. Signs were not few that the chase was drawing to a close. Old Joe’s examination of the man’s last camp-fire convinced him that it was not more than a very short time since the man had “moved on.”
Ominous slate-colored clouds began to roll up. There was a strange stillness in the air, like but very different from the hush that precedes a thunderstorm. They had about finished their noon snack when the boys noticed the dogs beginning to sniff about uneasily, elevating their noses and pacing up and down, giving from time to time short yapping barks.
“Aha!” cried old Joe as he saw this, “zee snow, he come. Beeg snow, I teenk. Malukes know. Boosh! It weel wipe out zee trail—bah!”
He knocked the ashes from his pipe disgustedly. The boys, in fact, felt equal disappointment. It appeared that the forces of nature had leagued themselves with their enemy. They pictured to themselves how the unknown fugitive must be chuckling as he saw the signs of the approaching storm which must obliterate his tracks.
“Are we going on?” asked Tom, as old Joe rose to his feet and looked about him.