“The devil, but you make me uncomfortable,” he protested.  “The hammer is up, too, M’seur!”

“Yes, it is up,” said Howland grimly.  “And it never leaves your back, Croisset.  If the gun should go off accidentally it would bore a hole clean through you.”

Half an hour later the Frenchman halted where the banskians climbed the side of a sloping ridge.

“If you could trust me I would ask to go on ahead,” whispered Jean.  “This ridge shuts in the plain, M’seur, and just over the top of it is an old cabin which has been abandoned for many years.  There is not one chance in a thousand of there being any one there, though it is a good fox ridge at this season.  From it you may see the light in Meleese’s window at night.”

He did not stop to watch the effect of his last words, but began picking his way up the ridge with the dogs tugging at his heels.  At the top he swung sharply between two huge masses of snow-covered rock, and in the lee of the largest of these, almost entirely sheltered from the drifts piled up by easterly winds, they came suddenly on a small log hut.  About it there were no signs of life.  With unusual eagerness Jean scanned the surface of the snow, and when he saw that there was trail of neither man nor beast in the unbroken crust a look of relief came into his face.

“Mon Dieu, so far I have saved my hide,” he grinned.  “Now, M’seur, look for yourself and see if Jean Croisset has not kept his word!”

A dozen steps had taken him through a screen of shrub to the opposite slope of the ridge.  With outstretched arm he pointed down into the plain, and as Howland’s eyes followed its direction he stood throbbing with sudden excitement.  Less than a quarter of a mile away, sheltered in a dip of the plain, were three or four log buildings rising black and desolate out of the white waste.  One of these buildings was a large structure similar to that in which Howland had been imprisoned, and as he looked a team and sledge appeared from behind one of the cabins and halted close to the wall of the large building.  The driver was plainly visible, and to Howland’s astonishment he suddenly began to ascend the side of this wall.  For the moment Howland had not thought of a stair.

Jean’s attitude drew his eyes.  The Frenchman had thrust himself half out of the screening bushes and was staring through the telescope of his hands.  With an exclamation he turned quickly to the engineer.

“Look, M’seur!  Do you see that man climbing the stair?  I don’t mind telling you that he is the one who hit you over the head on the trail, and also one of those who shut you up in the coyote.  Those are his quarters at the post, and possibly he is going up to see Meleese.  If you were much of a shot you could settle a score or two from here, M’seur.”

The figure had stopped, evidently on a platform midway up the side of the building.  He stood for a moment as if scanning the plain between him and the mountain, then disappeared.  Howland had not spoken a word, but every nerve in his body tingled strangely.