The house in the clearing was dark and quiet as the grave when Catherine and Tom reached it. Blackie did not bark at them, for he was with them, shivering cheerfully at Tom’s heels from the combination of loyal enthusiasm and chilliness. Catherine entered the house, as silent as a shadow of the night. Tom went to one of the barns and unearthed his wool-lined leather coat and with it on replaced the patched mackinaw of Gaspard’s which he had been wearing. He returned to the house just as Catherine reappeared with twenty-five of her grandfather’s cartridges, half a dozen cakes of his tobacco and a small bag of flour.

Tom received these things from her hands with mumbled words of thanks. He behaved so awkwardly that he dropped the tobacco and had to get down on his hands and knees to recover it.

“Snowshoes and moccasins,” she whispered. “I almost forgot them; and I’m sure it will snow before morning.”

Again she slipped into the sleeping house; and again she returned, this time with a pair of cowhide moccasins, an assortment of woolen socks and two pairs of snowshoes. They retired to a safe distance from the house and there made everything into a pack of sorts. She helped him lift the pack to his shoulders and adjust it.

“Now you must go, you must hurry,” she said.

He extended his mittened hands and rested them lightly on her shoulders.

“I’ll go—and I’ll hurry, of course,” he replied, in husky and hurried tones. “But if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t move an inch—I’d let them catch me and court-martial me and break me. Hunted by those fellows! A fugitive! But they’ll forget it some day—and that’s the day I am praying for—the day when I can tell you what I think of you, Cathie MacKim!”

Next moment she was gone from beneath his extended hands—gone, and vanished in the gloom toward the blacker gloom of the silent house.

He stood motionless for fully a minute, scarcely breathing, with his hands still extended. Then his arms sank slowly to his sides and his breath escaped in a gasping sigh of suggestive astonishment and even greater emotion. He hitched his pack higher, turned abruptly and headed northward through the cold and dark. But cold as it was and dark as it was he felt as warm as toast and stepped out as assuredly as if the sun were shining.

“By thunder, she kissed me!” he whispered. “Quick as winking—but that is what it was! They can’t catch me now, the poor Rubes—not in fifty years!”

He would probably have continued in this high strain for several minutes had he not strode squarely into the raking barrier of a brush-fence. After that, he walked with more circumspection; but in spite of a scratched face and a barked skin he felt at the top of his form.

The snow which Catherine had predicted began to circle down just as Tom reached his camp on Pappoose Lake. He placed his pack in the lean-to, fed the fire, and then went out and brought in his three traps. One had a mink. Returning to the camp he made all his possessions—including the tarpaulin and the dead mink—into two formidable packs. He shouldered one of these and started for Racquet Pond.

It was close upon seven o’clock in the morning, and snow was still falling, when Tom reached the camp on Racquet Pond. He found Mick Otter up and breakfasting by the light of the fire in the middle of his floor. He explained the situation without loss of time, in the fewest possible words.

“Got you,” said the old Maliseet, gulping the last of his mug of tea as he rose to his feet. “I go. You eat breakfas’, then fetch in two trap by brook, then pack. Git other five trap sometime maybe. Don’t matter now.”

Tom breakfasted and lit his pipe. He brought in the two nearest traps, which were empty. The snow continued to circle down through the windless air. The morning came on grayly, without a gleam of sunshine. He made another pack of everything that he could find about the camp—pelts dried and fresh, provisions and blankets and the two traps—and wondered what was to be done with all this luggage.

It was ten o’clock when Mick Otter appeared, staggering. He dropped his load, shook and beat the clinging snow from his head and shoulders and sat down with a grunt in the doorway of the shack.

“You make darn bad pack,” he said.

He pulled the mitten from his right hand, produced a short clay pipe from somewhere about his person and passed it over his shoulder, without turning his head.

“You fill a pipe,” he said. “You got dry ’baccy, what?”

He was a generous man, but he always made a point of cadging tobacco.

Tom, who stood behind him, took the pipe, filled it and returned it, then lit a splinter of wood at the fire and held the flame to the bowl. Mick puffed strongly.

“That a’ right,” he said. “Chuck fire out now. Smoke smell long ways.”

Tom obeyed, tossing the fire out into the new snow brand by brand.

“Good,” said Mick. “This snow darn good too, you bet. Don’t let up one-day, maybe. We make toboggan now an’ git out, what.”

“Whatever you say,” replied Tom. “You are in command, so long as we stay on the ground. But what shall we make the toboggan of, and how long will the job take us? We are supposed to be in a hurry, I believe.”

Mick got to his feet, ax in hand, and walked to a big spruce that towered nearby, all of it but the brown base and lower branches lost to view in the twirling white veils of snow. He hoisted himself to the lowest branch and lopped it off. Thus he cut six tough, wide branches. With these, and strips cut from a blanket, he quickly fashioned what he was pleased to call a toboggan. Upon it he laid all the packs and fastened them down with the tarpaulin. He rigged strong traces of blanket to the forward end of the thing.

“Now we pull him,” he said. “Guess he slide pretty good; an’ the snow fill up his track darn quick.”

They rounded the western end of the pond, dragging their possessions at their heels. They headed north then, pulling like horses, each with a rope of blanket over a shoulder and gripped in both hands. The toboggan, so called, stuck frequently and had to be yanked this way and that and lifted by the stern. It was hard work and slow progress—but they kept at it without rest until three o’clock in the afternoon; and the snow continued to fall thickly and windlessly all that time.

They pulled into a close thicket of young spruces, made a small fire and boiled snow for tea. After eating a few slices of bread and drinking a kettleful of tea, they lit their pipes and continued their journey. The visionless day darkened to black night; and still they toiled forward. The light, new snow took them to the knees. It was rough going all the way, with never more than a few yards of level ground at a time—over blow-downs and hidden hummocks of moss and hidden rocks, and through tangles of every variety of underbrush. Mick Otter missed his footing and fell twice and Tom did the same thing four times. Twice one of the packs worked loose and fell off; and at last the sledge itself fell apart from sheer wear and tear.

“Guess we go far ’nough to-night,” said the old Maliseet.

They cleared themselves a space in the heart of a clump of cedars and rigged the tarpaulin for a roof. As the snow was still falling thickly they permitted themselves a good fire. They took to their blankets and fell asleep before the bowls of their after-dinner pipes were cold.

When the fugitives awoke just before the first pale shimmer of dawn the snow had ceased to fall—but it lay all around them almost hip-deep and clung to the bowed tops and branches of the forest in great masses. They fried bacon and boiled the kettle at a mere pinch of fire. They constructed a new and stronger drag for their baggage, changed their boots for moccasins, donned their snowshoes and pulled out. The east showed silver, then red, then gold through the snow-burdened towers of the forest. Presently the sun lifted above the world’s edge, and with it arose a vigorous wind. Before that wind the light snow went up in clouds, even in the sheltered woods; and it fell from the shaken trees in showers and masses.

“Good,” said Mick Otter. “Snow hide our track yesterday, wind hide him to-day.”

“We seem to be playing in luck,” replied Tom; and then, “Are you heading for anywhere in particular?” he asked.

“Git to one dam good camp by sundown, maybe,” answered Mick. “Have buckwheat flapjacks an’ molas’ for supper, maybe.”

“A camp!” exclaimed Tom. “Do you mean a lumber-camp? That would be a crazy thing to do!”

“Nope, don’t mean lumber-camp. Camp I make long time back. Live in him three-four week las’ winter.”

An hour later, while crossing a corner of open barren, they were almost smothered by the drifting snow. And the cold was piercing. Also, the lightness of the snow made the “going” exceedingly difficult—but this condition improved as the wind drove it into white headlands and packed it tight.

Before noon, the backs of Tom’s legs were attacked by snowshoer’s cramp. It was exactly noon when he relinquished the painful struggle and sat down with a yelp of pain. Mick Otter saw what the trouble was at a glance. He made a fire and dragged Tom close to it. Then he produced a pot of bear’s grease from the luggage, melted a quantity of it and rubbed it vigorously into the cramped muscles of Tom’s legs. Tom held his nose.

“If the detective gets a whiff of that he will track us around the world,” he said, at the conclusion of the operation.

“We don’t go ’round the world, so that a’ right,” replied the Maliseet.

The bear’s grease proved to be as potent as it smelt; and by the time dinner had been cooked and eaten, Tom’s muscles were free from pain and comparatively limber. But it was not until a full hour after sunset that Mick Otter halted and said they had arrived. He let fall his trace and vanished in a wall of spruces. Tom backed up and reclined on the loaded drag; and presently he saw the glow of firelight through the heavy branches and crowded stems of the thicket.

“Come in,” called Mick. “Plenty time unload after supper.”

The camp was one to be proud of. It was at least thirty feet long. In width it dwindled from about fifteen feet to as many inches, and its height permitted Tom to stand upright. Its front wall was built of logs and a part of the roof of poles and brush. The sides and the greater part of the roof were of rock and earth. It pierced the rugged hill at a gentle slant. It had been a brush-filled little gully backed by a little cave inhabited by a large bear, when Mick Otter first found it, many years ago.

When Tom scrambled through the small doorway, his snowshoes still on his feet, he found the place full of smoke from the newly lighted fire. The fire burned in a chimney of mud-plastered stones that went crookedly upward against one rocky wall and vanished through the roof of poles. Tom remarked on Mick’s evident appetite for smoke, remembering the camp on Racquet Pond.

“A’ right pretty soon, you bet,” said Mick. “Coons make nest in the chimley, maybe, or maybe snow stuff him up. One darn good chimley, anyhow. He suck up smoke fine most times.”

Snow was the trouble; and at that moment a bushel of it slid down and extinguished the fire, leaving the owner and his guest in absolute darkness.

“That a’ right,” said Mick. “Now he suck up smoke fine.”

He quickly cleared the snow and wet faggots from the hearth and laid and touched a match to dry bark and dry wood. He was right—the smoke went straight up the chimney in the most knowing manner. He was pleased.

“You don’t find no better chimley nor him in Fredericton nor Noo York nor Muntree-hall,” he said.

Then, working by the increasing illumination from the hearth, he raised a square of poles from the floor—a thing that looked more like a miniature raft than a door—and propped it across the low entrance of the cave.

“He have two good hinges made of ol’ boot las’ winter, but some darn b’ar come along an’ bust him in, I guess,” he explained.

“Don’t apologize,” said Tom, kicking off his snowshoes and throwing aside his fur cap and leather coat. “If I had been the bear I would have stayed right here till spring, once I had forced the door.”

He sat down on a heap of dry brush close to the fire. Mick went to the far end of the cave, to investigate the condition of the stores which he had left there the winter before.

“That b’ar stop plenty long enough!” he exclaimed. “He eat all the prune an’ all the backum, darn his long snout!”

“Is that so!” cried Tom, now keenly interested. “And what about the molasses?”

“He don’t git that molas’, no,” replied Mick. “He don’t have no corkscrew ’long with him that trip, I guess.”

“And the buckwheat meal? How about that?”

“Buckwheat a’ right, too.”

“I’ll fetch the pan and the kettle and the baking powder.”

The supper was a success. The flapjacks, fried in a pan greased with a rind of bacon and flooded with molasses at the very moment of consumption, were delicious. Even the two that missed the pan in the act of turning and flapped into the fire lost nothing in flavor.

After supper they brought in the outfit and spread their blankets to warm. There was enough dry fuel inside to last for several days. Outside, the wind continued to blow and the snow to drift before it.

In the morning they found the hingeless door banked high with snow; and upon pushing their way out they found the trail of their approach drifted full up to the edge of the dense wood which screened the front of their retreat. A land of small, heavily wooded hills lay around them. The sky was clear, a thin wind was still blowing and the air was bitterly cold. They made their way over the roof of their dwelling and up the rough slope behind, plunging and squirming through tangles of brush and snow hip-deep; and, upon reaching the crown of the hill, Tom climbed into the spire of a tall spruce. From that high perch he could look abroad for miles in every direction. He looked back over the country through which they had made the laborious journey, and saw nothing but black forests and gray swamps; with here and there the pale trunks of birch trees, and here and there a ridge of high gray maples and beeches, and patches and strips of gleaming snow everywhere. Nothing moved but the wind, and thin, sudden clouds of snow that puffed up and ran and sank before it. No least haze of smoke, no sign of human habitation or trafficking, tinged the clear air above the forests or marred the white of the open spaces. He turned his head and searched the bright horizon all around the world and every square yard of the landscape within his range of vision. There was no smoke or ghost of smoke anywhere, nor any break in the timber that looked as if it had been cut by the hand of man, nor any sign of movement on the patches and lanes of snow. He descended and reported to Mick Otter.

“That a’ right,” said Mick. “Guess we stop here an’ see what happen, hey? Don’t make no tracks in front an’ lay low, what?”

“Sounds good to me—but what about our smoke?” asked Tom.

Mick pointed down the southern slope of the hill, where the underbrush between the boles of the wide-limbed spruces and firs grew thick and interlaced.

“Darn little smoke git through that,” he said. “Burn dry hard-wood all day, anyhow—an’ mighty little of him.”

“It seems to me that we might stay here until Tone and the detective chuck it. If we keep a sharp look-out they won’t catch us in daylight; and they’ll never find that cave at night. It suits me. I don’t want to go any farther away than I have to.”

“Maybe—but we stop here only two-three day, to rest up an’ look out. Go north an’ west then, to place I know where we buy grub—an’ find little camp of mine pretty near the hull way. Maybe they don’t know nothin’ ’bout you over to Timbertown—so we trap an’ make some money, what?”

“Buy grub? We have enough to last us weeks—and I haven’t a dollar.”

The Maliseet smiled and tapped his chest with a mittened finger.

“Got plenty dollar an’ plenty fur, me, Mick Otter,” he said.

They worked all that day and the next at the construction of a real toboggan, leaving their work only to eat, and to climb into the top of their look-out tree once in every couple of hours of daylight. They failed to discover any sign of pursuit.

This toboggan was made of thin strips of seasoned ash which Mick had prepared for this very purpose two years ago. These were held in place, edge to edge, by numerous cross-pieces of the same tough wood; and as they lacked both nails and screws they had to tie the cross-pieces down with thongs of leather. They were without a gimlet; they hadn’t even a small bit of wire to heat and burn holes with; so the numerous holes through which the thongs of leather were passed had to be bored and cut with knives—Mick Otter’s sheath-knife and Tom’s pen-knife. The strips of ash of which the floor of the toboggan was formed were an inch thick. They bored and they gouged. They raised blisters in unexpected places on their hard fingers. Tom broke the tips off both blades of his knife. But they stuck to it and made a good job of it.

They buried half of their wheat flour and a little of their bacon in the cave, along with the half-full jug of molasses and the tin can of buckwheat meal, and banked the low door with logs and brush. Then they dragged their new toboggan up and over the hill and down its northern slope. The newly-risen sun showed a hazy face above the black hills, and the light wind that fanned along out of the east had no slash or sting in it.

“That snow work for us agin, maybe,” said Mick Otter.