further than Jan could track him, with only
three days’ grub in the bag.

In the morning he passed their second
night’s camp. By noontide he had come to
the edge of a big, oval marsh that was about
six miles wide at its narrowest. On its bar-
ren floor there were occasional clumps ot
dead sticks, juniper and fir.

The trail was dim and wind-scoured. A
mile out and there was nothing but the dully
shining spots the sleds had polished; two
miles out and Mathieu was veering off to
the east, deviating now from his north-west
course.

The marks petered out entirely, heading,
at the last, straight east. If Mathieu were
really heading north-west, the blue notch
at the marsh’s far end was the natural way
for him. Then why, in the middle of the
marsh, did he swing off for the steep ridges
to the east?

He stopped and stood with his back to
the wind, leaning against it. Mathieu, he
figured, wanted to go through the blue
notch, but it was too plain. He knew his
track could be picked up there first thing.
So he cut off in the middle of the marsh,
thinking there’d be no mark of it left.

Mathieu had just made a little circle
round, and was now right on down the val-
ley.

Jan picked up his gamebag and trotted off
toward the now invisible notch. Lord Harry,
he was hungry. In the wind he felt like sing-
ing; the wind drowned sound, sang a song
of its own.

The drift had obscured the shores now,
and he was as though alone in the middle
of a white sea, snow above, below, and on all
sides.

At dusk, miles beyond the blue notch,
he picked up the Indians’ track again. He
glowed with the warmth of a hunter’s pride.
They'd never get away now; they were
doomed, unless it snowed.

A mile further on they had camped, and
there he camped, too. There was still a faint
warmth in the depths of their ashes. But
the sight of a bundle lashed in the low
branches of a spruce made him pause. It
was a hairy caribou skin, a big trout net,
and a heavyish iron Dutch oven. So, they
were lightening loads, were they? They

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knew they were being tracked, then. How
did they know?

Jan sat on the fir brush of their tent site,
and thought about it. They didn’t know,
they couldn’t know. Mathieu was just play-
ing safe, that was all.

Mathieu would go on for a week, get his
women set in a good camp, then circle back,
hunting as he came, and pick up his stuff
again.

That’s what you think, Mathieu.

SNOW CovERS TRAILS

Late in the forenoon as he stood examin-
ing a small valley, thick with willows and
boulders, he was conscious from the corner
of his eye that a tuft of snow was slipping
down the face of a grey boulder off to the
left. Was somebody behind there? He
turned and ran, dodging through the trees.

Skirting the end of the willows, he
stealthily approached the trail further on.
No, no one had been there.

Here were the three prints, just the three
prints, Mathieu’s almost indistinguishable
under the women’s and the sled’s. The
women had given up hauling tandem. They
took turns singly and when they changed
places Mathieu didn’t wait for them. They
had to run a little to catch up, poor things.
Luce could never have hauled like that.

The sky was growing a deeper grey, dark-
ness coming early. The air was chill with a
suspicion of dampness. Come a big patch of
snow to cover their track and make the
walking back heavy, he'd be in a fine fix
with no food. He smelled the wind and it
smelled like snow. Before dark it began to
fall, and at dark he still had not caught
them. Must be getting weak, he thought
ruefully. He’d set some rabbit snares to-
night. Or maybe he'd get a partridge. And
maybe he wouldn't.

He stood on the shore of a little lake and
leaned against a tree, uncertain. With the
new snow and the dark there was only the
barest sign of the track now. By. morning it
would be gone? What was that sharp smell?

He threw back his head and sniffed.
Wood smoke! He had caught them. Let the
snow pelt down, let it snow six feet in the
night; he had caught them, and they
couldn’t get away.

Strange, though, that they should camp
before the snow got thick. An hour more
and they would have been safe. Well,
Mathieu had made his last mistake this
time.

Over a knoll in a thick clump of firs Jan
built a small fire to boil the kettle. He was
ravenous and weary to the bone. They were
camped, they would keep till he got ready
for them. And they couldn’t smell his smoke
with the wind this way.

He ate the last of his bannock, drank four
cups of tea, and smoked his pipe to the last
dregs. Then he left his bag and axe, took
his rifle and stole out across the dark lake.
Tt was black as ink, and the new snow was
like cotton wool to mufile his steps. Just back
from the far shore he saw their dome-shaped
shelter. They were burning a candle in
there, one of his own probably.

He crawled up closer on hands and knees,
foot by foot. The two sleds were stuck up
against a tree; there was the chopping block,
the axe, the chips. Snowshoes were hang-
ing from a limb, the two small pairs. The
women inside were baking bread. He could
hear the frying pan scrape on the tin stove.

They were talking in their soft, musical
voices, more like a brook under the ice than
like human talk. They weren’t hardly
human anyway.

But he could not bring himself to walk
into the tent and shoot them in cold blood.
Better get Mathieu first. But where were
the big snowshoes—where was Mathieu?
Behind that black tree there with his rifle
cocked?

He lay silent scarcely breathing, ears
stretched for the slightest sound. There were
only the wind and the falling snow and the
women’s voices and the scraping pan.

Fifteen minutes, a half-hour, he lay thus.

He was freezing, he couldn’t lie there all
night. Inch by inch he crawled away. Silent
as a shadow, he went back across the lake.
There was danger everywhere now, every
time he moved a muscle. He could feel it
all around him, feel a prickling in his scalp
and a supernatural certainty that as he was
stalking Mathieu, Mathieu was stalking
him.

Cautiously, with long waits, he approched
his camp. The fire was out. His fingers

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