It was at a bad place towards the end of that forced march that the Colonel, instead of lifting the back of the sled, bore hard on the handle-bar.  With a vicious sound it snapped.  The Boy turned heavily at the noise.  When he saw the Colonel standing, dazed, with the splintered bar in his hand, his dull eyes flashed.  With sudden vigour he ran back to see the extent of the damage.

“Well, it’s pretty discouragin’,” says the Colonel very low.

The Boy gritted his teeth with suppressed rage.  It was only a chance that it hadn’t happened when he himself was behind, but he couldn’t see that.  No; it was the Colonel’s bungling—­tryin’ to spare himself; leanin’ on the bar instead o’ liftin’ the sled, as he, the Boy, would have done.

With stiff hands they tried to improvise a makeshift with a stick of birch and some string.

“Don’t know what you think,” says the Colonel presently, “but I call this a desperate business we’ve undertaken.”

The Boy didn’t trust himself to call it anything.  With a bungled job they went lamely on.  The loose snow was whirling about so, it was impossible to say whether it was still falling, or only hurricane-driven.

To the Colonel’s great indignation it was later than usual before they camped.

Not a word was spoken by either till they had finished their first meal, and the Colonel had melted a frying-pan full of snow preparatory to the second.  He took up the rice-bag, held it by the top, and ran his mittened hand down the gathered sack till he had outlined the contents at the bottom.

“Lord!  That’s all there is.”

The boy only blinked his half-shut eyes.  The change in him, from talkativeness to utter silence, had grown horribly oppressive to the Colonel.  He often felt he’d like to shake him till he shook some words out.  “I told you days ago,” he went on, “that we ought to go on rations.”

Silence.

“But no! you knew so much better.”

The Boy shut his eyes, and suddenly, like one struggling against sleep or swooning, he roused himself.

“I thought I knew the more we took off the damn sled the lighter it’d be.  ’Tisn’t so.”

“And we didn’t either of us think we’d come down from eighteen miles a day to six,” returned the Colonel, a little mollified by any sort of answer.  “I don’t believe we’re going to put this job through.”

Now this was treason.

Any trail-man may think that twenty times a day, but no one ought to say it.  The Boy set his teeth, and his eyes closed.  The whole thing was suddenly harder—­doubt of the issue had been born into the world.  But he opened his eyes again.  The Colonel had carefully poured some of the rice into the smoky water of the pan.  What was the fool doing?  Such a little left, and making a second supper?

Only that morning the Boy had gone a long way when mentally he called the boss of the Big Chimney Camp “an old woman.”  By night he was saying in his heart, “The Colonel’s a fool.”  His pardner caught the look that matched the thought.