He could see where the wounded man had dragged himself up the trail, finally staggering to his feet, and with a caution which he had not exercised a few hours before Howland continued slowly between the thick forest walls, one hand clutching the butt of the revolver in his coat pocket.  Where the trail twisted abruptly into the north he found the charred remains of a camp-fire in a small open, and just beyond it a number of birch toggles, which had undoubtedly been used in place of tent-stakes.  With the toe of his boot he kicked among the ashes and half-burned bits of wood.  There was no sign of smoke, not a living spark to give evidence that human presence had been there for many hours.  There was but one conclusion to make; soon after their unsuccessful attempt on his life his strange assailants had broken camp and fled.  With them, in all probability, had gone the girl whose soft eyes and sweet face had lured him within their reach.

But where had they gone?

Carefully he examined the abandoned camp.  In the hard crust were the imprints of dogs’ claws.  In several places he found the faint, broad impression made by a toboggan.  The marks at least cleared away the mystery of their disappearance.  Sometime during the night they had fled by dog-sledge into the North.

He was tired when he returned to the hotel and it was rather with a sense of disappointment than pleasure that he learned the work-train was to leave for Le Pas late that night instead of the next day.  After a quiet hour’s rest in his room, however, his old enthusiasm returned to him.  He found himself feverishly anxious to reach Le Pas and the big camp on the Wekusko.  Croisset’s warning for him to turn back into the South, instead of deterring him, urged him on.  He was born a fighter.  It was by fighting that he had forced his way round by round up the ladder of success.  And now the fact that his life was in danger, that some mysterious peril awaited him in the depths of the wilderness, but added a new and thrilling fascination to the tremendous task which was ahead of him.  He wondered if this same peril had beset Gregson and Thorne, and if it was the cause of their failure, of their anxiety to return to civilization.  He assured himself that he would know when he met them at Le Pas.  He would discover more when he became a part of the camp on the Wekusko; that is, if the half-breed’s warning held any significance at all, and he believed that it did.  Anyway, he would prepare for developments.  So he went to a gun-shop, bought a long-barreled six-shooter and a holster, and added to it a hunting-knife like that he had seen carried by Croisset.

It was near midnight when he boarded the work-train and dawn was just beginning to break over the wilderness when it stopped at Etomami, from which point he was to travel by hand-car over the sixty miles of new road that had been constructed as far north as Le Pas.  For three days the car had been waiting for the new chief of the road, but neither Gregson nor Thorne was with it.