"Those who tried to kill you on the trail and at the coyote, M'seur," he answered quickly.
Howland fell half a dozen paces behind. By the end of the first hour he was compelled to rest frequently by taking to the sledge, and their progress was much slower. Jean no longer made answer to his occasional questions. Doggedly he swung on ahead to the right and a little behind the team leader, and Howland could see that for some reason Croisset was as anxious as himself to make the best time possible. His own impatience increased as the morning lengthened. Jean's assurance that the mysterious enemies who had twice attempted his life were only a short distance behind them, or a short distance ahead, set a new and desperate idea at work in his brain. He was confident that these men from the Wekusko were his chief menace, and that with them once out of the way, and with the Frenchman in his power, the fight which he was carrying into the enemy's country would be half won. There would then be no one to recognize him but Meleese.
His heart leaped with joyous hope, and he leaned forward on the sledge to examine Croisset's empty gun. It was an automatic, and Croisset, glancing back over the loping backs of the huskies, caught him smiling. He ran more frequently now, and longer distances, and with the passing of each mile his determination to strike a decisive blow increased. If they reached the trail of Meleese and Jackpine before the crossing of the second sledge he would lay in wait for his old enemies; if they had preceded them he would pursue and surprise them in camp. In either case he would possess an overwhelming advantage.
With the same calculating attention to detail that he would have shown in the arrangement of plans for the building of a tunnel or a bridge, he drew a mental map of his scheme and its possibilities. There would be at least two men with the sledge, and possibly three. If they surrendered at the point of his rifle without a fight he would compel Jean to tie them up with dog-traces while he held them under cover. If they made a move to offer resistance he would shoot. With the automatic he could kill or wound the three before they could reach their rifles, which would undoubtedly be on the sledge. The situation had now reached a point where he no longer took into consideration what these men might be to Meleese.
As they continued into the northwest Howland noted that the thicker forest was gradually clearing into wide areas of small banskian pine, and that the rock ridges and dense swamps which had impeded their progress were becoming less numerous. An hour before noon, after a tedious climb to the top of a frozen ridge, Croisset pointed down into a vast level plain lying between them and other great ridges far to the north.
"That is a bit of the Barren Lands that creeps down between those mountains off there, M'seur," he said. "Do you see that black forest that looks like a charred log in the snow to the south and west of the mountains? That is the break that leads into the country of the Athabasca. Somewhere between this point and that we will strike the trail. Mon Dieu, I had half expected to see them out there on the plain."
"Who? Meleese and Jackpine, or--"
"No, the others, M'seur. Shall we have dinner here?"
"Not until we hit the trail," replied Howland. "I'm anxious to know about that one chance in a hundred you've given me hope of, Croisset. If they have passed--"
"If they are ahead of us you might just as well stand out there and let me put a bullet through you, M'seur."
He went to the head of the dogs, guiding them down the rough side of the ridge, while Howland steadied the toboggan from behind. For three-quarters of an hour they traversed the low bush of the plain in silence. From every rising snow hummock Jean scanned the white desolation about them, and each time, as nothing that was human came within his vision, he turned toward the engineer with a sinister shrug of his shoulders. Once three moving caribou, a mile or more away, brought a quick cry to his lips and Howland noticed that a sudden flush of excitement came into his face, replaced in the next instant by a look of disappointment. After this he maintained a more careful guard over the Frenchman. They had covered less than half of the distance to the caribou trail when in a small open space free of bush Croisset's voice rose sharply and the team stopped.
"What do you think of it, M'seur?" he cried, pointing to the snow. "What do you think of that?"
Barely cutting into the edge of the open was the broken crust of two sledge trails. For a moment Howland forgot his caution and bent over to examine the trails, with his back to his companion. When he looked up there was a curious laughing gleam in Jean's eyes.
"Mon Dieu, but you are careless!" he exclaimed. "Be more careful, M'seur. I may give myself up to another temptation like that."
"The deuce you say!" cried Howland, springing back quickly. "I'm much obliged, Jean. If it wasn't for the moral effect of the thing I'd shake hands with you on that. How far ahead of us do you suppose they are?"
Croisset had fallen on his knees in the trail.
"The crust is freshly broken," he said after a moment. "They have been gone not less than two or three hours, perhaps since morning. See this white glistening surface over the first trail, M'seur, like a billion needle-points growing out of it? That is the work of three or four days' cold. The first sledge passed that long ago."
Howland turned and picked up Croisset's rifle. The Frenchman watched him as he slipped a clip full of cartridges into the breech.
"If there's a snack of cold stuff in the pack dig it out," he commanded. "We'll eat on the run, if you've got anything to eat. If you haven't, we'll go hungry. We're going to overtake that sledge sometime this afternoon or to-night--or bust!"
"The saints be blessed, then we are most certain to bust, M'seur," gasped Jean. "And if we don't the dogs will. Non, it is impossible!"
"Is there anything to eat?"
"A morsel of cold meat--that is all. But I say that it is impossible. That sledge--"
Howland interrupted him with an impatient gesture.
"And I say that if there is anything to eat in there, get it out, and be quick about it, Croisset. We're going to overtake those precious friends of yours, and I warn you that if you make any attempt to lose time something unpleasant is going to happen. Understand?"
Jean had bent to unstrap one end of the sledge pack and an angry flash leaped into his eyes at the threatening tone of the engineer's voice. For a moment he seemed on the point of speech, but caught himself and in silence divided the small chunk of meat which he drew from the pack, giving the larger share to Howland as he went to the head of the dogs. Only once or twice during the next hour did he look back, and after each of these glances he redoubled his efforts at urging on the huskies. Before they had come to the edge of the black banskian forest which Jean had pointed out from the farther side of the plain, Howland saw that the pace was telling on the team. The leader was trailing lame, and now and then the whole pack would settle back in their traces, to be urged on again by the fierce cracking of Croisset's long whip. To add to his own discomfiture Howland found that he could no longer keep up with Jean and the dogs, and with his weight added to the sledge the huskies settled down into a tugging walk.
Thus they came into the deep low forest, and Jean, apparently oblivious of the exhaustion of both man and dogs, walked now in advance of the team, his eyes constantly on the thin trail ahead. Howland could not fail to see that his unnecessary threat of a few hours before still rankled in the Frenchman's mind, and several times he made an effort to break the other's taciturnity. But Jean strode on in moody silence, answering only those things which were put to him directly, and speaking not an unnecessary word. At last the engineer jumped from the sledge and overtook his companion.
"Hold on, Jean," he cried. "I've got enough. You're right, and I want to apologize. We're busted--that is, the dogs and I are busted, and we might as well give it up until we've had a feed. What do you say?"
"I say that you have stopped just in time, M'seur," replied Croisset with purring softness. "Another half hour and we would have been through the forest, and just beyond that--in the edge of the plain--are those whom you seek, Meleese and her people. That is what I started to tell you back there when you shut me up. Mon Dieu, if it were