The men took with them part of the tea and enough fish to feed the dogs once.  They expected to find game sufficient to supply themselves and stock up for a few days.  Whaley insisted on leaving Jessie her rifle, in order that she might shoot a rabbit or two if any ventured near the cabin.  She had three frozen fish and a handful of tea.

Before they started Whaley drew Jessie aside.  “Can’t say how long we’ll be gone.  Maybe two days—­or three.  You’ll have to make out with what you’ve got till we get back.”  He hesitated a moment, then his cold, hard eyes held fast to hers.  “Maybe only one of us will come back.  Keep your eyes open.  If there’s only one of us—­and it’s West—­don’t let him get into the house.  Shoot him down.  Take his snowshoes and the team.  Follow the creek down about five miles, then strike southwest till you come to Clear Lake.  You know your way home from there.”

Her dark eyes dilated.  “Do you think he means to—­to—?”

The man nodded.  “He’s afraid of me—­thinks I mean to set the police on his trail.  If he can he’ll get rid of me.  But not yet—­not till we’ve got a couple of caribou.  I’ll be watching him all the time.”

“How can you watch him while you’re hunting?”

He lifted his shoulders in a shrug.  It was quite true that West could shoot him in the back during the hunt.  But Whaley knew the man pretty well.  He would make sure of meat before he struck.  After the sled was loaded, Whaley did not intend to turn his back on the fellow.

Jessie had not been brought up in the North woods for nothing.  She had seen her brother Fergus make many a rabbit snare.  Now she contrived to fashion one out of some old strips of skin she found in the cabin.  After she had bent down a young sapling and fastened it to a fallen log, she busied herself making a second one.

Without snowshoes she did not find it possible to travel far, but she managed to shoot a fox that adventured near the hut in the hope of finding something to fill its lean and empty paunch.

Before leaving, Whaley had brought into the house a supply of wood, but Jessie added to this during the day by hauling birch poles from the edge of the creek.

Darkness fell early.  The girl built up a roaring fire piled the wood up against the door so that nobody could get in without waking her.  The rifle lay close at hand.  She slept long and soundly.  When she shook the drowsiness from her eyes, the sun was shining through the window.

She breakfasted on stew made from a hindquarter of fox.  After she had visited her snares and reset one that had been sprung, she gathered balsam boughs for a bed and carried them to the house to dry before the fire.  Whaley had left her a small hatchet, and with this she began to shape a snowshoe from a piece of the puncheon floor.  All day she worked at this, and by night had a rough sort of wooden ski that might serve at need.  With red-hot coals, during the long evening, she burned holes in it through which to put the straps.  The skin of the fox, cut into long strips, would do for thongs.  It would be a crude, primitive device, but she thought that at a pinch she might travel a few miles on it.  To-morrow she would make a mate for it, she decided.