Indian Pete’s death was the talk of Tramworth for a month. The “Sentinel” printed a vivid account of the tragedy, commenting on the Indian as having been a crack shot and emphasizing the possibility of even experienced hunters making grave mistakes. Much to the sheriff’s disgust the article concluded with, “In again reviewing this tragedy, one important fact should not be overlooked. The Indian fired three shots at the supposed deer. This information we have from a trustworthy source.” In a later issue the sheriff read, “Mr. Ross visited Tramworth last week, accompanied by the brave animal that so nobly avenged the alleged ‘mistake,’ as described in a recent issue of this paper. Both seem to be in excellent health.”

This issue of the “Sentinel” eventually reached the lumber-camps clustered about the spot where township lines Nine and Fifteen intersected. It was read with the eager interest that such an article would create in an isolated community that had known and liked or disliked “Injun Pete.” Some of the lumbermen expressed approval of the dog, appreciating the unerring instinct of animals in such cases. Others expressed a sentimental sympathy for the Indian, and Smoke’s history would have been a brief one had their sanguinary threats been executed. Most of the men seemed to consider David Ross as a victim of circumstance rather than an active participant in the affair. Yet in one shadowy corner of the main camp it was recalled by not a few that Ross had made Harrigan “take the count,” had in fact whipped him in fair fight. There were head-shakings and expressive silences over this; silences because Harrigan had friends in the camp, and he was czar.

One evening, much to the surprise of every one, Barney Axel, who had been gloomily uncommunicative heretofore, gave them something to think about, especially as he was regarded as Harrigan’s closest friend, and a man prone to keep his own counsel.

It happened that Joe Smeaton, an axe-man at the main camp, and universally unpopular owing to his habit of tale-bearing, was rehearsing the “Sentinel’s” account of Indian Pete’s death to an interested but silent audience.

“Denny’s hit kind of hard,” he ventured at random.

Several nodded.

“He kind of liked Pete.”

More nods and a muttering of “That’s so—he sure did.”

Then, out of the smoke-heavy silence following, came Barney Axel’s voice, tense with the accumulated scorn of his secret knowledge.

“He’ll be hit harder yet!”

There was a covert threat in the tone. Pipes stopped wheezing. The men stared anywhere but at each other. This was high treason.

“Fisty’s drinkin’ too much,” he added, covering his former statement with this counter-suggestion, which seemed to satisfy every one but Smeaton. He took occasion to repeat the conversation to Harrigan that night in the seclusion of the wangan office.

“He said that, did he?” Harrigan’s heavy brows drew together. Smeaton nodded. Harrigan spat on the glowing stove viciously. “Things at the ‘Wing’ ain’t runnin’ jest to suit me. Barney’s been boss there just three years too long. He’s sufferin’ fur a new job, and he’ll get it.” Then he turned to Smeaton. “Joe, you can take charge at the ‘Wing’ in the mornin’.”

Early next day Fisty and Joe Smeaton drove over to Axel’s camp. They found him in the woods, hard at it with his men, as usual. The “Wing” was the best-managed camp at Nine-Fifteen.

“Barney,” said Harrigan, taking him to one side, “I’m thinkin’ you’d like a better job.”

“Ain’t got no kick, Denny,” said Axel, eyeing Smeaton suspiciously.

“You’ve been foreman here for three years. I’m thinkin’ you’d like a change—to a better payin’ job.”

“Well, if it’s more pay—I would that,” said Axel. “What’s the job?”

Harrigan stepped close to him. “It’s lookin’ fur another one,” he said. “You kin go!”

A wolfish grin twisted Axel’s lips and Harrigan reached for his hip-pocket; but, disregarding him, the discharged foreman leaped to Smeaton and planted a smashing blow in his face. “That’s one I owe you, Joe. Stand up ag’in and I’ll pay the whole ’count and int’rest.”

Smeaton, on his knees, the blood dripping from his mouth and nose, spat out curses and incidentally a tooth or two, but he refused to stand up. Harrigan had drawn his gun and stood swinging it gently, and suggestively. Axel swung round and faced him, his eyes contemptuous as they rested on the blue gleam of the Colt.

“Got any fust-class reason for firin’ me so almighty fast?” he asked quietly.

“No,” said Harrigan, “’cept I’m t’rough wid you.”

“Don’t be so ram-dam sure of that, Mr. Denny Harrigan,” he said, turning his back and going for his mackinaw, which was down the road near the men.

Smeaton looked up and saw the gun in Harrigan’s hand. He arose and walked quietly toward his boss, who was still watching Axel. Fisty felt the gun jerked from his grip, and before he could even call out, the big .44 roared close to his ear and he saw Axel’s shirt-sleeve twitch, a second before he leaped behind a spruce for protection.

Smeaton flung the gun from him and ran toward the shanty, as the men came up from here, there, and everywhere. The shot had been too near them to pass unnoticed.

Harrigan recovered the Colt and slid it in his pocket, as Axel came from behind the tree, white, but eyes burning.

“It’s all right, boys,” he shouted. “Went off by accident. Nobody’s goin’ to get shot.”

They picked their steps back through the heavy snow, one “Pug” Enderly grunting to his companion, “Dam’ a man that’ll carry a gun, anyhow.”

“Keep your hands easy, Denny Harrigan,” said Axel. “I got a better way to get even with you, and you knows it.”

Harrigan fingered the butt of the Colt in his pocket. So Barney was going to peach about—no, he couldn’t prove anything about Ross and the Indian, but he did know too much about a certain find on Lost Farm tract. Harrigan snarled as he realized that Axel held the whip-hand.

He jerked the gun from his pocket, murder gleaming in his agate-blue eyes.

“Now, you git, quick!” he snapped, leveling the short, ugly barrel at Axel’s head.

“It’s mighty nigh time—you’re right,” said Axel. “When a boss gits crazy ’nough to come at the men he’s hirin’, with a gun, it’s about time to quit. And I’m goin’,” he added, stalking to where his snowshoes were planted in a drift; “and if you dast, shoot ahead while I’m gettin’ ready.”

Harrigan stood watching him as he laced the thongs of his snowshoes. He realized that Axel’s going meant the squelching of his prospects, the unmasking of the find on Lost Farm, and he temporized gruffly.

“You can’t make it by to-night, Barney.”

“Can’t, eh? Well, my bucko, I’m goin’ to.”

He straightened to his gaunt height and shook first one foot, then the other. “Guess they’ll stick.”

Then he swung down the road, passed the men at work, without a word to them, and disappeared in the forest.

The pulse of his anger steadied to a set purpose with the exertion of breaking a trail through the fine-bolted snow which lay between him and the Tramworth “tote-road.” When he came out on the main road, he swung along vigorously. At the end of the second mile he stopped to light his pipe and shed the mackinaw, which he rolled and carried under his arm. It was piercingly cold, but, despite the stinging freshness of the morning, he was sweating. He knew that he must reach Lost Farm before nightfall. He trudged along, a tall, lonely figure, the lines of his hard-lived forty years cut deep in his weather-worn face. The sun rode veiled by a thin white vapor, a blurred midday moon. He glanced up and shook his head. “She’s a-goin’ to snow,” he muttered. From nowhere a jay flashed across the opening ahead of him. Again he stopped and lit his pipe. Then he struck up a brisker gait. The long white miles wound in and out of the green-edged cavern through which he plodded. Click! clack! click! clack! his snowshoes ticked off the stubborn going. He fell to counting. “A dum’ good way to git played out,” he exclaimed. He fixed his gaze on the narrow, tunnel-like opening left by the snow-feathered branches that seemed to touch in the distance and bar the trail, endeavoring to forget the monotonous tick of his snowshoes.

A little wind blew in his face and lifted a film of snowdust that stuck to his eyelashes. He pulled off his mitten and brushed his eyes. There on the trail, where had been nothing but an unbroken lane of undulating white, stood a great brown shape. As Barney tugged at his mitten the shape whirled, forelegs clear of the snow, and Whish! a few shaking firs, a falling of light snow from their breast-high tops, and the moose was gone.

“Go it, ole gamb’l roof!” shouted Barney, as the faint plug, plug, plug, of those space-melting strides died away. Before he realized it he was counting again. Then he sang,—a mirthless, ribald ditty of the shanties,—but the eternal silence swallowed his chant so passively that he ceased.

A film of snow slid from a branch and powdered the air with diamond-dust that swirled and settled gently. Above, a thin wind hissed in the pine tops.

The sun had gone out in a smother of ashy clouds, and the trees seemed to be crowding closer. Pluff! pluff! a mass of snow slid from the wide fan of a cedar, and breaking, dropped softly in the snow beneath.

Barney quickened his stride. A single flake, coming out of the blind nothingness above, drove slanting down and sparkled on his leather mitten. Then came another and another, till the green-fringed vista down which he trudged was suddenly curtained with whirling white. The going became heavier. The will to overcome the smothering softness that gave so easily to the forward thrust, yet hung a clogging burden on each lift of the hide-laced ash-bows, redoubled itself as he plunged on. Presently the trail widened, the forest seemed to draw back, and he found himself on the wide, white-masked desolation of Lost Lake.

Panting, he stopped. Instantly the rising wind struck freezing through his sweat-dampened shirt. He jerked on his coat. “I’ll make her yet—but I guess I’ll stick to the shore. How in tarnation I come to miss the road gets me, but this is Lost Lake all right, and a dum’ good name fur it.”

He turned toward the forest that loomed dimly through the hurtling white flakes. When he reached its edge he looked at his watch. It was four o’clock. He had been traveling six hours without food or rest. He followed the shore line, frequently stumbling and falling on the rocks that lay close to the surface of the snow. The wind grew heavier, thrusting invisible hands against him as he leaned toward it. It was not until after his third fall that the possibility of his never reaching Lost Farm overtook him. Before he realized it, night was upon him, and he could scarcely see the rim of his snowshoes as he drew them up, each step accomplished by sheer force of will. He thought of the men who had left the camp above and had never been heard from. It was bad enough, when a man’s light went out in a brawl, or on the drive; but to face the terror of the creeping snow, lost, starving, dragging inch by inch toward a hope that was treason to sanity. Finally, raving, cursing, praying, dying, alone—

Well, it was “up to him” to walk. He struggled on in the darkness. Had he known it, he was almost opposite the trail that crossed the dam at the foot of Lost Lake and wound up the hillside to Avery’s camp. Again he stumbled and fell. The fury of despair seized him and he struggled in the resistless snow. His foot was caught in some buried branches. Had it been daylight he would have reached down and carefully disentangled himself, but the terror of night and uncertainty was on him. He jerked his leg out and was free, but the dangling web of a broken snowshoe hung about his ankle. The ash-bow had snapped.

“Done!” His tone commingled despair and anger. Then the spirit, which had buoyed on the lashing current of many a hazardous enterprise, rallied for a last attempt.

“What! Quit because I think I’m done? The dam’ snowshoe is busted, but I ain’t—yet.”

He hobbled toward the trees, fighting his slow way with terrible intensity. Beneath a twisted cedar he rested. The cold took hold upon him and lulled him gently.

“I’ll fix her up and plug along somehow.” He examined the shoe. “Take a week to fix that,” he muttered. “Guess I’ll start a fire and wait till mornin’.”

He felt in his pockets. He had used his last match in lighting his pipe. “Wal, I was a fool to fly off the handle ’thout grub or matches or nothin’. Wal, I kin cool off now, I reckon.”

He felt drowsily comfortable. The will to act was sinking as his vitality ebbed beneath the pressure of cold and hunger.

He gritted his teeth. “What! let my light go out afore I get a finishin’ crack at Denny Harrigan?”

In the blanket of night a pin-prick of red appeared. It moved, vanished, moved again.

“Dreamin’,” he grumbled. His head sunk on his chest. Once more he lifted his frosted eye-lids. The red point was moving.

“Last call fur supper,” he said; and bracing his hands against the cedar, he drew in a great breath and shouted.

“Hallo-o-o!” came faintly to him on the wind.

“Hallo-o-o—yerself,” he added, in a drowsy whisper. His last round was spent.

David Ross, on his way from Avery’s cabin to his own, heard the far-away call. He immediately turned and walked toward the spot where Axel was. As he drew near he circled about, peering under the bending branches. He looked here and there, holding the lantern high above his head. Nothing answered as he called. Nothing moved. He turned back toward the trail, round which twinkled the lights of Lost Farm Camp. The wind had hushed. The snow fell lazily. In the silence a rustling caught his ear. Axel, huddled against the cedar trunk, had slipped sideways, his coat scraping against the loose-fibred bark.

David traced the sound to a snowshoe sticking up in the drift beneath the tree. Then a moccasined foot, a red-striped stocking, and finally he was kneeling by the unconscious Barney, shaking him vigorously. The lumberman’s eyes slowly opened, then closed again heavily. David placed his lantern in the lee of the cedar and, kicking off one of his own racquettes, belabored Axel with it unsparingly.

Finally, the torpor broke and Axel opened his eyes. “A’right, a’right,” he muttered. “Git up in a minute—jest a minute—”

In the half-hour it had taken David to reach him, the frost had gripped Axel’s blood with clogging fingers that were not to be easily shaken off. Slipping his snowshoe on again, he propped the drowsy figure against the tree and worked himself under the inert shoulders. He reached up and grasped the wide coat-collar, then straightened himself suddenly. He had the lumberman on his back, but could he stagger through that killing half-hour again? Hanging the lantern on a low stub as he stooped beneath the burden of that dead weight on his shoulders, he turned toward the camp, fighting his way first and wondering how he did it afterwards.

Hoss Avery was pouring hot coffee between Axel’s blue lips when the latter coughed and his eyes unclosed.

David, holding the lamp above him, stooped nearer. A look of recognition brightened Barney’s heavy eyes for a moment.

“Jest—the—man—I’m—lookin’—fur,” he whispered. Then he yawned, turned on his side and David thought he heard those grim lips murmur, “Sleep.”