Her failure at the other cabins, the lack, thus far, of all signs of the fugitive, the vastness of the hunting-ground magnified by the loneliness of winter, had convinced her finally that her quest was futile.  It was all a venture of madness.  The idea that a woman, alone and single-handed, with no weapon but a revolver, could track down and subdue a desperate murderer in winter mountains where hardly a wild thing stirred, and make him return with her to the certain penalty—­this proved how much mental mischief had again been caused by the lure of money.  The glittering seduction of gold had deranged her.  She realized it now, her mind normal in an exhausted body.  So she gained the walls of the buildings and stumbled around them, thoughtless of any possible signs of the fugitive.

The stars were out in myriads.  The Milky Way was a spectacle to recall vividly the sentiment of the Nineteenth Psalm.  The log-buildings of the clearing, every tree-trunk and bough in the woods beyond, the distant skyline of stump and hollow, all stood out sharply against the peculiar radiance of the snow.  The night was as still as the spaces between the planets.

Like some wild creature of those winter woods the woman clumped and stumbled around the main shack, seeking the door.

Finding it, she stopped; the snowshoe slipped from beneath her arm; one numb hand groped for the log door-casing in support; the other fumbled for the revolver.

Tracks led into that cabin!

A paralysis of fright gripped Cora McBride.  Something told her intuitively that she stood face to face at last with what she had traveled all this mountain wilderness to find.  Yet with sinking heart it also came to her that if Hap Ruggam had made these tracks and were still within, she must face him in her exhausted condition and at once make that tortuous return trip to civilization.  There would be no one to help her.

She realized in that moment that she was facing the primal.  And she was not primal.  She was a normal woman, weakened to near-prostration by the trek of the past twenty-four hours.  Was it not better to turn away while there was time?

She stood debating thus, the eternal silence blanketing forest-world and clearing.  But she was allowed to make no decision.

A living body sprang suddenly upon her.  Before she could cry out, she was borne down precipitously from behind.

She tried to turn the revolver against the Thing upon her, but the gun was twisted from her raw, red fingers.  The snow into which she had been precipitated blinded her.  She smeared an arm across her eyes, but before clear sight was regained, talon fingers had gripped her shoulders.  She was half lifted, half dragged through the doorway, and there she was dropped on the plank flooring.  Her assailant, turning, made to close and bar the door.

When she could see clearly, she perceived a weak illumination in the cabin.  On the rough bench-table, shaded by two slabs of bark, burned the stub of a tallow candle probably left by some hunting-party.