Endowed with redoubled energy at his bettered prospects, Jose turned and sped off in a long lurching snowshoe stride for the mouth of the Takhini River which emptied into the Fifty-mile halfway between Whitehorse and Lake Laberge.
They turned up the Takhini, sometimes called the Mendenhall since both these rivers joined to form the larger stream which emptied into the Fifty-mile, the Mendenhall draining Taye Lake lying to the westward on the Dalton Trail and the Takhini flowing north by east from Kusawa Lake between the Yukon River and the Dezadeash country.
Cantine and Blera were traveling almost due westward. On their left to the south lay Haeckel Hill. On their right to the north loomed the Miner’s Range, and on the far horizon beyond the valley of the tributary Klokhok jutted higher, nameless peaks. In interminable vastness the land spread before them, virgin ground oft from the main-traveled trail to Dawson City, and the stupendous extent of it was enough to strike fear into the human heart.
But Cantine had no fear. In the lonely expanse he knew the spot where was life and warm teepees and food. Tutchi was a chief, and he kept his village in a fairly sanitary condition, a condition immeasurably superior to that of the squalid teepees to be found along the Yukon basin. Cantine had been there and he knew, and up the Takhini’s smooth ice he pressed at a furious pace, the beast instinct of him yearning for food and the human side of him yearning for a place where he might without dread of contumely take on again the status of the white.
Jose’s sentiments were in a degree reflected in his companion. She ran at his heels with the swing of the Northwoman trained to the trails, and she seemed to have no difficulty in keeping his pace.
The Klokhok River they sought flowed south along the base of the Miner’s Range into the Takhini. All afternoon they held on for it and at night swung suddenly to the right into its spruce-fringed mouth. Yonder by the fringe of spruce on the low bench-land was the site of Tutchi’s Village, but to Cantine’s astonished eyes there glowed no teepee fires between the black trunks.
“Blazes!” he exclaimed in alarm as he surveyed the bare bench-land. “She’s gone, Blera. And how in tarnation’s that? It wasn’t just a camping-ground. It was a permanent village. But maybe they’ve shifted up-stream or back in the range. Let’s see if there’s a trail.”
With a swift pang of fear and loneliness caused by she knew not what, Blera mechanically followed Cantine as he skimmed up the snow-sheeted ice alongside the Klokhok’s left limit. In that moment of non-discovery of the village the inimical wild crept close to her. She saw it as a concrete force, strong, sure, ruthless as the persecuting Bassett or the avenging hand of Eric Sark.
Her fear grew upon her so that she drew near to Jose in his search, her hand on his elbow, and skimmed with him stride by stride. Her eyes were furtively turned to the dark spruce forests crowding on either side, while the eyes of her companion scrutinized the snowy bank. That was why neither of them marked the scum ice, fragile mask of an unfrozen spring, straight ahead.