His voice took on a whine intended for good-fellowship.  “I reckon I was too pre-emtory.  O’ course I was sore the way you two left me holdin’ the sack.  Any one would ‘a’ been now, wouldn’t they?  But no use friends fallin’ out.  We got to make the best of things.”

Whaley’s chill face did not warm.  He knew the man with whom he was dealing.  When he began to butter his phrases, it was time to look out for him.  He would forget that his partner had brought him from Faraway a dog-team with which to escape, that he was supplying him with funds to carry him through the winter.  He would remember only that he had balked and humiliated him.

“Better get into the house the stuff from the sled,” the gambler said.  “And we’ll rustle wood.  No telling how long this storm’ll last.”

“Tha’s right,” agreed West.  “When I saw them sun dogs to-day I figured we was in for a blizzard.  Too bad you didn’t outfit me for a longer trip.”

A gale was blowing from the north, carrying on its whistling breath a fine hard sleet that cut the eyeballs like powdered glass.  The men fought their way to the sled and wrestled with the knots of the frozen ropes that bound the load.  The lumps of ice that had gathered round these had to be knocked off with hammers before they could be freed.  When they staggered into the house with their packs, both men were half-frozen.  Their hands were so stiff that the fingers were jointless.

They stopped only long enough to limber up the muscles.  Whaley handed to Jessie the revolver he had taken from West.

“Keep this,” he said.  His look was significant.  It told her that in the hunt for wood he might be blinded by the blizzard and lost.  If he failed to return and West came back alone, she would know what to do with it.

Into the storm the two plunged a second time.  They carried ropes and an axe.  Since West had arrived, the gale had greatly increased.  The wind now was booming in deep, sullen roars and the temperature had fallen twenty degrees already.  The sled dogs were nowhere to be seen or heard.  They had burrowed down into the snow where the house would shelter them from the hurricane as much as possible.

The men reached the edge of the creek.  They struggled in the frozen drifts with such small dead trees as they could find.  In the darkness Whaley used the axe as best he could at imminent risk to his legs.  Though they worked only a few feet apart, they had to shout to make their voices carry.

“We better be movin’ back,” West called through his open palms.  “We got all we can haul.”

They roped the wood and dragged it over the snow in the direction they knew the house to be.  Presently they found the sled and from it deflected toward the house.

Jessie had hot tea waiting for them.  They kicked off their webs and piled the salvaged wood into the other end of the cabin, after which they hunkered down before the fire to drink tea and eat pemmican and bannocks.