a perspiration which the cold solidifies midway through the garments.  At every pause the clammy clothes grow chill, forcing one forward, onward, with sweating body and freezing face.  In extreme cold, snow pulverizes dryly till steel runners drag as though slid through sand.  Occasional overflows bar the stream from bank to bank, resulting in wet feet and quick changes by hasty fires to save numb toes.  Now the air is dead under a smother of falling flakes that fluff up ankle deep, knee deep, till the sled plunges along behind, half buried, while the men wallow and invent ingenious oaths.  Again the wind whirls it by in grotesque goblin shapes; wonderful storm beings, writhing, whipping, biting as they pass; erasing bank and mountain.  Yet always there is that aching, steady tug of the shoulder-rope, stopping circulation till the arms depend numbly; and always the weary effort of trail breaking.

Captain felt that he had never worked with a more unsatisfying team mate.  Not that Klusky did not pull, he evidently did his best, but he never spoke, while the other grew ever conscious of the beady, glittering eyes boring into his back.  At camp, the Jew watched him furtively, sullenly, till he grew to feel oppressed, as with a sense of treachery, or some fell design hidden far back.  Every morning he secured the ropes next the sled, thus forcing Captain to walk ahead.  He did not object to the added task of breaking trail, for he had expected the brunt of the work, but the feeling of suspicion increased till it was only by conscious effort that he drove himself to turn his back upon the other and take up the journey.

It was this oppression that warned him on the third day.  Leaning as he did against the sled ropes he became aware of an added burden, as though the man behind had eased to shift his harness.  When it did not cease he glanced over his shoulder.  Keyed up as he was this nervous agility saved him.

Klusky held a revolver close up to his back, and, though he had unconsciously failed to pull, he mechanically stepped in the other’s tracks.  The courage to shoot had failed him momentarily, but as Captain turned, it came, and he pulled the trigger.

Frozen gun oil has caused grave errors in calculation.  The hammer curled back wickedly and stuck.  Waiting his chance he had carried the weapon in an outer pocket where the frost had stiffened the grease.  Had it been warmed next his body, the fatal check would not have occurred.  Even so, he pulled again and it exploded sharp and deafening in the rarefied morning air.  In that instant’s pause, however, Captain had whirled so that the bullet tore through the loose fur beneath his arm.  He struck, simultaneously with the report, and the gun flew outward, disappearing in the snow.

They grappled and fell, rolling in a tangle of rope, Klusky fighting with rat-like fury, whining odd, broken curses.  The larger man crushed him in silence, beating him into the snow, bent on killing him with his hands.