More than once he had scented death in tepees and cabins, which he had not entered, and more than once he had sniffed at the mystery of death that was not quite present, but near—­just as he had caught at a distance the subtle warning of storm and of fire.  And that strange thing seemed to be very near to him now, as he followed at the end of his chain behind the sledge.  It made him restless, and half a dozen times, when the sledge stopped, he sniffed at the bit of humanity buried in the bearskin.  Each time that he did this Joan was quickly at his side, and twice she patted his scarred and grizzled head until every drop of blood in his body leaped riotously with a joy which his body did not reveal.

This day the chief thing that he came to understand was that the little creature on the sledge was very precious to the girl who stroked his head and talked to him, and that it was very helpless.  He learned, too, that Joan was most delighted, and that her voice was softer and thrilled him more deeply, when he paid attention to that little, warm, living thing in the bearskin.

For a long time after they made camp Pierre Radisson sat beside the fire.  To-night he did not smoke.  He stared straight into the flames.  When at last he rose to go into the tent with the girl and the baby, he bent over Kazan and examined his hurt.

“You’ve got to work in the traces to-morrow, boy,” he said.  “We must make the river by to-morrow night.  If we don’t—­”

He did not finish.  He was choking back one of those tearing coughs when the tent-flap dropped behind him.  Kazan lay stiff and alert, his eyes filled with a strange anxiety.  He did not like to see Radisson enter the tent, for stronger than ever there hung that oppressive mystery in the air about him, and it seemed to be a part of Pierre.

Three times that night he heard faithful Gray Wolf calling for him deep in the forest, and each time he answered her.  Toward dawn she came in close to camp.  Once he caught the scent of her when she circled around in the wind, and he tugged and whined at the end of his chain, hoping that she would come in and lie down at his side.  But no sooner had Radisson moved in the tent than Gray Wolf was gone.  The man’s face was thinner, and his eyes were redder this morning.  His cough was not so loud or so rending.  It was like a wheeze, as if something had given way inside, and before the girl came out he clutched his hands often at his throat.  Joan’s face whitened when she saw him.  Anxiety gave way to fear in her eyes.  Pierre Radisson laughed when she flung her arms about him, and coughed to prove that what he said was true.

“You see the cough is not so bad, my Joan,” he said.  “It is breaking up.  You can not have forgotten, ma cheri?  It always leaves one red-eyed and weak.”

It was a cold bleak dark day that followed, and through it Kazan and the man tugged at the fore of the sledge, with Joan following in the trail behind.  Kazan’s wound no longer hurt him.  He pulled steadily with all his splendid strength, and the man never lashed him once, but patted him with his mittened hand on head and back.  The day grew steadily darker and in the tops of the trees there was the low moaning of a storm.