“To use it or destroy it?”
“Destroy it?” Jennings stared at him in astonishment. “What would be the sense of destroying it? He doesn’t know he’s being followed; leastwise, I don’t think he does. Who’d think of destroying a winter’s supply of grub? It wasn’t Napoleon who burned Moscow, was it?”
Joe did not answer, but he and Curlie had their own private notions about the matter.
Then, just as they hoped to be closing in upon the prey, two things happened which postponed that great event for many days. They came suddenly out upon the open tundra, where the snow was hard-packed by the wind, where the trail was difficult to follow, and where, with as good a trail as the boys had to follow, the soft snow no longer gave them the advantage and the outlaw could make as good time as they—probably better, for his dogs were stronger.
“Bad luck to us,” Jennings stormed. “We’ll have to follow him straight to the Arctic and us with no food but a dozen pounds of fish. If we don’t watch out we’ll be in full retreat, eating our dogs as we go.”
Curlie, who had been sitting on his sled silently watching something in the distance, suddenly leaped to his feet exclaiming:
“It moves!”
“What does?” demanded Joe.
“Something off there to the left.”
“Think it’s him?”