The sun’s rays, reflected from the snow in a blinding, brilliant glare, smote Morse full in the eyes.  For days the white fields had been very trying to the sight.  There had been moments when black spots had flickered before him, when red-hot sand had been flung against his eyeballs if he could judge by the burning sensation.

He knew now, in a flash, what was wrong with West.

To Beresford he told it in two words.

The constable slapped his thigh.  “Of course.  That’s the answer.”

Night fell, the fugitives still not in sight.  The country was so rough that they might be within a mile or two and yet not be seen.

“Better camp, I reckon,” Morse suggested.

“Yes.  Here.  We’ll come up with them to-morrow.”

They were treated that evening to an indescribably brilliant pyrotechnic display in the heavens.  An aurora flashed across the sky such as neither of them had ever seen before.  The vault was aglow with waves of red, violet, and purple that danced and whirled, with fickle, inconstant flashes of gold and green and yellow bars.  A radiant incandescence of great power lit the arch and flooded it with light that poured through the cathedral windows of the Most High.

At daybreak they were up.  Quickly they breakfasted and loaded.  The trail they followed was before noon a rotten one, due to a sudden rise in the temperature, but it still bore south steadily.

They reached the camp where West and his guide had spent the night.  Another chapter of the long story of the trail was written here.  The sled and the guide had gone on south, but West had not been with them.  His webs went wandering off at an angle, hesitant and uncertain.  Sometimes they doubled across the track he had already made.

Beresford was breaking trail.  His hand shot straight out.  In the distance there was a tiny black speck in the waste of white.  It moved.

Even yet the men who had come to bring the law into the Lone Lands did not relax their vigilance.  They knew West’s crafty, cunning mind.  This might be a ruse to trap them.  When they left the sled and moved forward, it was with rules ready.  The hunters stalked their prey as they would have done a musk ox.  Slowly, noiselessly, they approached.

The figure was that of a huge man.  He sat huddled in the snow, his back to them.  Despair was in the droop of the head and the set of the bowed shoulders.

One of the dogs howled.  The big torso straightened instantly.  The shaggy head came up.  Bully West was listening intently.  He turned and looked straight at them, but he gave no sign of knowing they were there.  The constable took a step and the hissing of the shoe-runner sounded.

“I’m watchin’ you, Stomak-o-sox,” the heavy voice of the convict growled.  “Can’t fool me.  I see every step you’re takin’.”

It was an empty boast, almost pathetic in its futility.  Morse and Beresford moved closer, still without speech.