“I will,” said Dick, as he turned back to drive Toma’s team. “You may depend upon it.”
So, just before sunset, he called an early halt and while the other members of the party unharnessed the teams and proceeded to make supper, he climbed to the crest of a small hill and gazed off towards the northeast. Shadows had already commenced to appear along the hollows and ridges. There was no glare over the snow now. He could see for miles across that forsaken, desolate land.
Yet at first he could see nothing that resembled a hill. Where the horizon began, it was true, there reposed what looked like a bank of mist, but which, unlike mist, remained perfectly stationary and unchanging in form—a sort of purplish blotch against the blue background of the sky.
This, he decided, must be the hill Toma referred to. It didn’t look like one to his inexperienced eyes, yet hill it must be. The young Indian had good eyesight and a vast knowledge of the North stored away in that clever brain of his. At any rate, provided it didn’t disappear during the night, he would use that hill or blotch, or whatever it was, as the goal for tomorrow’s weary trek.
He returned to find supper waiting for him. The dog mushers sat huddled around the blazing campfires, resting after their arduous day. Dick was glad that he had called a halt earlier than usual. The physical strain of tramping hour after hour through soft, yielding drifts had been almost unendurable.
Usually after the evening meal, Dick remained beside the campfire to talk with Sandy and Dr. Brady, but tonight he felt too tired. After he had eaten, he bade his friends good-night and repaired to his tent, where he was soon lost in sleep.
When he awakened, a blue darkness still enveloped the earth. It was very early. He had a vague notion that he had been disturbed. Somewhere at the back of his consciousness was the dim memory of voices and running footsteps. But whether this was reality or a fragment of some vivid dream, he could not say. He lay still for a few minutes, listening.
Satisfied, at length, that he had heard nothing, that it was all an illusion, he turned on his side and attempted to go back to sleep. Just then there broke across his hearing, unusually clear and distinct, a shrill human cry. The cry was followed by the sound of a struggle and a muffled groan.
In a flash, Dick was up and fumbling for a candle. He tore into his clothes. He sprang to the tent opening and darted through—coatless, hatless, a revolver gripped firmly in his right hand. He made his way quickly toward the sound of struggling, arriving just as two men swayed to their feet and seized each other in another desperate embrace.
In the darkness, it was impossible to tell who the two combatants were. For the life of him, Dick could not guess their identity. However, he advanced, gun held in readiness.