Stupefied with horror, Howland strained his ears to catch the rest of the cold-blooded scheme which he was overhearing, but the voices grew lower and he understood no more that was said until Croisset, coming nearer, called out: 

“Help me with the M’seur before you go, Jackpine.  He is a dead weight with all those rawhides about him.”

As coolly as though he were not more than a chunk of stovewood, Croisset and the Indian came through the bushes, seized him by the head and feet, carried him out into the trail and laid him lengthwise on the sledge.

“I hope you have not caught cold lying in the snow, M’seur,” said Croisset, bolstering up the engineer’s head and shoulders and covering him with heavy furs.  “We should have been back sooner, but it was impossible.  Hoo-la, Woonga!” he called softly to his lead-dog.  “Get up there, you wolf-hound!”

As the sledge started, with Croisset running close to the leader, Howland heard the low snapping of a whip behind him and another voice urging on other dogs.  With an effort that almost dislocated his neck he twisted himself so he could look back of him.  A hundred yards away he discerned a second team following in his trail; he saw a shadowy figure running at the head of the dogs, but what there was on the sledge, or what it meant, he could not see or surmise.  Mile after mile the two sledges continued without a stop.  Croisset did not turn his head; no word fell from his lips, except an occasional signal to the dogs.  The trail had turned now straight into the North, and soon Howland could make out no sign of it, but knew only that they were twisting through the most open places in the forests, and that the play of the Polar lights was never over his left shoulder or his right, but always in his face.

They had traveled for several hours when Croisset gave a sudden shrill shout to the rearmost sledge and halted his own.  The dogs fell in a panting group on the snow, and while they were resting the half-breed relieved his prisoner of the soft buckskin that had been used as a gag.

“It will be perfectly safe for you to talk now, M’seur, and to shout as loudly as you please,” he said.  “After I have looked into your pockets I will free your hands so that you can smoke.  Are you comfortable?”

“Comfortable—­be damned!” were the first words that fell from Howland’s lips, and his blood boiled at the sociable way in which Croisset grinned down into his face.  “So you’re in it, too, eh?—­and that lying girl—­”

The smile left Croisset’s face.

“Do you mean Meleese, M’seur Howland?”

“Yes.”

Croisset leaned down with his black eyes gleaming like coals.

“Do you know what I would do if I was her, M’seur?” he said in a low voice, and yet one filled with a threat which stilled the words of passion which the engineer was on the point of uttering.  “Do you know what I would do?  I would kill you—­kill you inch by inch—­torture you.  That is what I would do.”