* * * * *

“Well,” sighed the Colonel, after toiling onward for a couple of hours the next morning, “this is the worst yet.”

But by the middle of the afternoon, “What did I say?  Why, this morning—­everything up till now has been child’s play.”  He kept looking at the Boy to see if he could read any sign of halt in the tense, scarred face.

Certainly the wind was worse, the going was worse.  The sled kept breaking through and sinking to the level of the load.  There it went! in again.  They tugged and hauled, and only dragged the lashing loose, while the sled seemed soldered to the hard-packed middle of the drift.  As they reloaded, the thermometer came to light.  The Colonel threw it out, with never a word.  They had no clothes now but what they stood in, and only one thing on the sled they could have lived without—­their money, a packet of trading stores.  But they had thrown away more than they knew.  Day by day, not flannels and boots alone, not merely extra kettle, thermometer and gun went overboard, but some grace of courtesy, some decency of life had been left behind.

About three o’clock of this same day, dim with snow, and dizzy in a hurricane of wind, “We can’t go on like this,” said the Boy suddenly.

“Wish I knew the way we could go on,” returned the Colonel, stopping with an air of utter helplessness, and forcing his rigid hands into his pockets.  The Boy looked at him.  The man of dignity and resource, who had been the boss of the Big Chimney Camp—­what had become of him?  Here was only a big, slouching creature, with ragged beard, smoke-blackened countenance, and eyes that wept continually.

“Come on,” said his equally ruffianly-looking pardner, “we’ll both go ahead.”

So they abandoned their sled for awhile, and when they had forged a way, came back, and one pulling, the other pushing, lifting, guiding, between them, with infinite pains they got their burden to the end of the beaten track, left it, and went ahead again—­travelling three miles to make one.

“What’s the matter now?”

The Boy was too tired to turn his head round and look back, but he knew that the other man wasn’t doing his share.  He remembered that other time when the Colonel had fallen behind.  It seemed years ago, and even further away was the vague recollection of how he’d cared.  How horribly frightened he’d been!  Wasn’t he frightened now?  No.  It was only a dull curiosity that turned him round at last to see what it was that made the Colonel peg out this time.  He was always peggin’ out.  Yes, there he was, stoppin’ to stroke himself.  Trail-man?  An old woman!  Fit only for the chimney-corner.  And even when they went on again he kept saying to himself as he bent to the galling strain, “An old woman—­just an old woman!” till he made a refrain of the words, and in the level places marched to the tune.  After that, whatever else his vague thought went off upon, it came back to “An old woman—­just an old woman!”