The fag end of a yellow cigarette! Assuredly, then, the trail Wild Bird had seen was that of the fugitive. It began about two miles to the north by a tall “Rampick” (dead tree), near which he had camped, judging by the remains of a fire, and from which he had hacked off some dead limbs. And then Wild Bird herself gave another bit of evidence to clinch the identification. She had remarked the man’s funny snowshoes. Never had she seen any like them.
“Boosh! Mes garçons! We have found zee trail once more! Bien!”
Old Joe’s face beamed. But although they were anxious to hurry on, they could not leave the friendly Indians hastily without a severe breach of etiquette. But at length the social code of the tribe was satisfied, and, with well-fed dogs in the traces, they got under way once more. Wild Bird and another Indian went with them part of the way, so as to be sure that they would not miss the spot at which they were to pick up the trail.
At last they reached the gaunt “Rampick,” good-byes were said, and they had the satisfaction once more of following the two familiar parallel lines in the snow and beside them the tracks of the odd-shaped snowshoes. The sky was gloomy and gray, but the Indians had said there would be no more snow.
They journeyed on through a melancholy land all that afternoon. That fall there had been a forest fire, and the blackened stumps of the trees that had not fallen stood out, etched in ebony black, against the dreary gray sky.
It was a pensive and melancholy land. But through it all, to brighten the trail like a streak of vivid scarlet, was the track of the sled, the sled on which reposed the stolen black fox skin. And beside it, as if to assure them they were on the right track, lay at intervals little yellow-wrapped rolls of tobacco.
“Zee time ees not long now,” declared old Joe, when they camped that night on the edge of a gloomy little lake tucked away between two rocky ridges.
CHAPTER XIX—OLD JOE’S THREAT.
The following morning, when they rose, the sky was cloudless. The night before the stars had shone like diamond pin points in the sky. The Northern Lights had whirled in a mad dance of shimmering radiance.
Beyond the camp stretched the white smoothness of the frozen river leading from the sad little lake. The heaped masses of piled mountains showed to the north and west, savage boundaries, bristling with defiance toward the intruders into a frozen world.