“I think,” Factor MacClaren broke in, “that you’d better let me straighten out this tangle.”
“No, Uncle Walter,” Sandy protested, “I can do that better myself.” He walked over and sat down on the bed beside Dick.
“When I left here,” he commenced, “you know what my intention was: to follow the tracks of the man who had been hurt and, if possible, to find him. Well, I had no difficulty in getting back to the place where Toma and I had been. The trail wasn’t very hard to follow. There were blood-stains in the snow, and here and there, I could tell where the man had sat down to rest.
“I had been out on the trail—well, it couldn’t have been much more than an hour—when the tracks led me to an old dilapidated-looking cabin. Right away, I had a feeling that the man would be there, and I had a horrible suspicion that I would find him dead.
“I knocked at the door,” Sandy continued breathlessly, “but there was no answer. So I went in. I couldn’t see anything at first, it was so dark inside. There was only one small window. But pretty soon my eyes became accustomed to the light. There was a bunk, stove and two wooden benches in the room. A man was lying in the bunk with some blankets pulled around him.
“The wounded man had started a fire, but it had gone out and it was quite cold in the room. At first, I just stood there looking around, almost too frightened to move. When I walked over to the bunk, I was trembling all over. I had scarcely strength enough to pull down the blankets, which were tucked around the man’s head.”
Sandy paused and looked around him. His face was gray and drawn. Evidently, the memory was not a very pleasant one.
“The man,” he resumed in a low voice, “was Malemute Slade.”
Dick jumped.
“Sandy!” he cried in a stricken voice. “Don’t tell me he’s dead!”