“It is!” he exclaimed. “It is the outlaw! Passed while I slept. Why must a fellow be everlastingly sleeping his life away?
“But then,” he thought after a moment’s deliberation, “perhaps it was just as well. What could I have done without help and without weapons of any kind?”
Seating himself on his sled while his reindeer pawed deep into the snow in his search for reindeer moss, he thought things through.
“Joe Marion and Jennings,” he told himself, “will sooner or later give up their search for me and will get back on the outlaw’s trail. They realize the importance of capturing him. They are brave fellows. They will not hesitate to undertake it without me. The surest way to get in with them again is to stay on this trail. Only question is, shall I turn back to meet them, shall I camp right here, or shall I follow up the outlaw at once?”
After some deliberation he concluded that going back over the trail would be risky; he might miss his companions. They might get back on the outlaw’s trail after he had passed the spot on which they entered the trail. Remaining inactive did not suit him; he was not that kind of a boy.
“I’ll follow the outlaw,” he told himself. “I believe I’ve got a speedier outfit than he has. White men seldom drive reindeer, so the outlaw won’t suspect me even though he sees me at a distance. I can shadow him and, even unarmed as I am, may be able to prevent a disaster.”
Having come to this conclusion he led his reindeer to the crest of the ridge, faced him north, leaped upon the sled, slapped him on the hip with the jerk rein and was away.
For ten miles to the crack-crack of the reindeer’s hoofs, he shot away over the snow. As the keen air cut his cheek, as the low, flat sled bobbed and bumped beneath him, Curlie thought he had never known another such mode of travel. Surely a reindeer, when well broken, was the ideal steed of the Arctic.
“And the beauty of it is,” he told himself, “you don’t have to go hunting out feed for him when the day is done. He finds it for himself under the snow. You—
“Hey, there!” he exclaimed suddenly. “What you doing?”