“Fact is, Muckluck,” answered the Boy, disengaging himself with embarrassment, “my pardner here can hold up that end.  Don’t you think you’d better square Yukon Inua?  Don’t b’lieve he likes me.”

And they left her, shivering in her “Holy Cross clo’es,” staring after them, and sadly swinging her medal on its walrus-string.

“I don’t mind sayin’ I’m glad to leave Pymeut behind,” said the Colonel.

“Same here.”

“You’re safe to get into a muss if you mix up with anything that has to do with women.  That Muckluck o’ yours is a minx.”

“She ain’t my Muckluck, and I don’t believe she’s a minx, not a little bit.”

Not wishing to be too hard on his pardner, the Colonel added: 

“I lay it all to the chaparejos myself.”  Then, observing his friend’s marked absence of hilarity, “You’re very gay in your fine fringes.”

“Been a little too gay the last two or three hours.”

“Well, now, I’m glad to hear you say that.  I think myself we’ve had adventures enough right here at the start.”

“I b’lieve you.  But there’s something in that idea o’ yours.  Other fellas have noticed the same tendency in chaparejos.”

“Well, if the worst comes to the worst,” drawled the Colonel, “we’ll change breeches.”

The suggestion roused no enthusiasm.

“B’lieve I’d have a cammin’ influence.  Yes, sir, I reckon I could keep those fringes out o’ kinks.”

“Oh, I think they’ll go straight enough after this”; and the Boy’s good spirits returned before they passed the summer village.

It came on to snow again, about six o’clock, that second day out, and continued steadily all the night.  What did it matter?  They were used to snow, and they were as jolly as clams at high-tide.

The Colonel called a halt in the shelter of a frozen slough, between two banks, sparsely timbered, but promising all the wood they needed, old as well as new.  He made his camp fire on the snow, and the Boy soon had the beef-tea ready—­always the first course so long as Liebig lasted.

Thereafter, while the bacon was frying and the tea brewing, the Colonel stuck up in the snow behind the fire some sticks on which to dry their foot-gear.  When he pulled off his mucklucks his stockinged feet smoked in the frosty air.  The hint was all that was needed, that first night on the trail, for the Boy to follow suit and make the change into dry things.  The smoky background was presently ornamented with German socks, and Arctic socks (a kind of felt slipper), and mucklucks, each with a stick run through them to the toe, all neatly planted in a row, like monstrous products of a snow-garden.  With dry feet, burning faces and chilly backs, they hugged the fire, ate supper, laughed and talked, and said that life on the trail wasn’t half bad.  Afterwards they rolled themselves in their blankets, and went to sleep on their spruce-bough spring mattresses spread near the fire on the snow.