“I wonder how soon we’ll pick up the trail,” Sandy spoke from the depths of his frost-rimmed parka.
“No telling,” replied Dick through a cloud of steam, “we’re now following the tracks made by the Eskimo who came in last half scared to death. Corporal McCarthy believes these tracks will lead to the place where the white Eskimo and his men attacked those three Eskimos who went after the stolen dog team.”
The boys said no more then for the fast pace at which they were traveling took all their breath. For two hours they drove eastward across the snowfields under a gray cloud filmed sky. At the end of this time they came to a narrow defile between huge blocks of ice that had been thrown up by the waves at high tide. They threaded their way among the ice cakes for about a hundred yards when they came upon the scene of a terrible tragedy.
“It’s the two Eskimos that failed to come back last night!” Dick’s horrified exclamation was echoed by Sandy while the two policemen and the Eskimos bent over the two huddled forms in the snow.
The Eskimos had been killed, and all about them were signs of a deadly struggle. One sledge had been crushed, and its packing torn up and rifled of supplies. Two dogs lay dead, and prowling foxes had torn them to bits.
“If this isn’t the work of Fred Mistak, then I don’t know my name!” Corporal McCarthy cried, shaking his fist at the white silent hills. “But we’ll get him, we’ll get him, and he’ll pay a big price!”
Dick and Sandy thrilled at the words, and hastened to lend a hand to the burial of the bodies.
Two typical Eskimo graves were made by heaping small boulders upon the dead natives in a cairn-like mound, which would keep away the foxes, which had as yet scarcely harmed them, probably because the dogs had satisfied them for the present. To agree with the superstitions of the Eskimos the sledges, weapons and other paraphernalia of the deceased were buried with the dead.
“Now that sorry business is over,” Corporal McCarthy addressed the somber company, “we’ll pick up Mistak’s trail and see how fast we can mush. Every man of you keep watch for an ambush. This fellow is about as desperate as they make them, and we’ve already had a taste of his treachery. It’s our hide or his and let’s be careful it’s his. Mush on!”
Once more the dogs buckled into the harness and the long Eskimo whips lashed and crackled over many bobbing, white tails.