The sled party had come to the end of the ridge. They should naturally have gone gliding down the slope but, to Curlie’s vast astonishment, they moved straight on into thin air.
“What”—his mouth flew open in astonishment.
The next instant he laughed.
“A mirage!”
And so it was. As he focused his eyes closely upon the scene he could detect the faint outline of the long ridge upon which the party was really traveling.
“Might be forty miles away,” he told himself, “and I was going to stop them. Well, anyway,” he mused, “it’s a glimpse that may aid us in the future.”
He set himself to studying every detail of the equipment—dogs, harnesses, sleds, clothing, everything. He even sat down on the snow and traced on an old envelope with the stub of a pencil the picture as he saw it.
Then, suddenly, the sleds dropped from view.
“Light changed or they came to the edge of the ridge,” he told himself.
Left to his own thoughts, he began to doubt that this was the outlaw and his companion. There were natives in this region. These people had been dressed as natives. True, the dogs were hitched white man fashion and the sleds were white man type, but the Eskimo had learned many things from the whites; they took pleasure in imitating this superior race of people.