"Oui, I know! We weel travel through zee night. There be two ways thither, the one through zee woods an' zee oder between zee hills. Zee way of zee woods ees zee mos' easy, but dat of zee hills ees shorter. We weel take dat, an' maybe we give Chigmok and his white man one surprise."
Under the light of the stars, and helped by the occasional flashing light of the aurora, they travelled up the lake for some distance, then leaving its surface they turned abruptly eastward, following an unbroken trail through a country which began rapidly to alter in character. The great woods thinned out and the way they followed took an upward swing, whilst a steady wind with the knife-edge cold of the North began to blow in their faces. Stane at the gee-pole of the sledge, bent his head before the sharp particles of ice-like snow that it brought with it, and grew anxious lest they should be the vanguard of a storm. But looking up he saw the stars clear overhead, and guessing that the particles came from the trees and the high ground on either side of them, his fears left him.
Then a new and very real trouble assailed him. He began to have cramps in the calves of his legs, and it seemed as if his muscles were tying themselves into knots. Sharp pains in the groin made it a torture to lift his feet above the level of the snow; and once or twice he could have groaned with the pain. But he set his teeth grimly, and endured it in silence, thinking of the girl moving somewhere ahead in the hands of a lawless and ruthless man. He knew that the torture he was suffering was what was known among the voyageurs as mal de roquette, induced by a considerable tramp on snow-shoes after a long spell of inactivity, and that there was no relief from it, until it should gradually pass away of its own accord.
The trail was not an easy one, and the dogs whined as they bent to the collars, but Jean Bènard, with a frame of iron and with muscles like steel-springs marched steadily on, for what to Stane seemed hours, then in the shelter of a cliff crowned with trees he called a halt.
"We rest here," he said, "an' wait for zee daylight. Den we look down on zee lak' of zee Leetle Moose. We mak' fire behind zee rock."
Without more ado, he slipped the harness from the dogs and fed them, whilst Stane collected wood for a fire, which was made as an Indian makes his fire, small and round, and which, built behind a mass of rock, was hidden from any one on the lake-side of the trail. Then a meal was prepared of which both partook heartily; and over the pipes they sat to await the dawn. After a little while Stane, in spite of his consuming anxiety for Helen, under the genial warmth of the fire and the fatigue induced by the strenuous march, began to nod, and at last fell sound asleep. But Jean Bènard watched through the night, a look of hopelessness shadowing his kindly face.
CHAPTER XIX
A HOT TRAIL