“I want to be a part of that audience, too,” said the official, with a smile.

“I don’t want to hold up the job!” the visitor suggested hesitatingly.

“Go ahead,” his conductor answered.  “Here we are all waiting, and it’s nearly half-past four anyway.”

“Well, then, it was up in the Noatak Pass—­” he was beginning, when Hamilton stopped him.

“I don’t want to interrupt, right at the start,” he said, “but where is that pass?”

“I should have told you,” said the miner goodhumoredly, “it’s the pass between the Endicott an’ the Baird ranges, at the extreme northern end of the Rockies.  I hated to go through it, an’ I wouldn’t have, most times, not unless there was a mighty big pull to get me over there, but I had promised to count every one in my district, an’ so, of course, there was nothin’ else to do but go, even though I knew there was no one on the other side but a bunch of Eskimos.  Well, we were halfway up the pass when the Indian guide stopped the dogs an’ listened.  It was just about noon an’ the travelin’ was good, so that, wantin’ to make time, I got good an’ mad at the stop.  Knowin’ my Indian, I kep’ quiet just the same, always bein’ willin’ to bet on an Indian bein’ right on the trail.  First off, I could notice nothin’, then, when I threw back my parka hood I could hear a boomin’ in the air as though some one was beatin’ a gong, miles and miles away.  It was so steady a sound that after you had once heard it for a while you wouldn’t notice it, an’ you would have to listen again real hard to see if it was still goin’ on.”

“Like distant thunder?” queried Hamilton.

“Not a bit.  It was high, like a gong, an’ it wasn’t any too good to hear.  The dogs knew it, too, for though we had been stopped nearly five minutes none of them had started to fight.”

“Do dogs fight every time they stop?”

“Just about.  They try to, anyway.  In the traces, of course, they can’t do much but snap an’ snarl, but that they’re always doin’.  This time, however, all save one or two of them stood upright sniffin’ uneasily.

“‘Wind?’ I asked the Indian.

“‘Heap wind!’ he answered.  ‘Go back?’

“Now you may lay ten to one that when an Indian is the first to suggest goin’ back, trouble with a big ‘T’ is right handy.  I reckon that was the first time I ever did hear an Indian propose goin’ back.  ’Why go back, Billy?’ I asked.

“‘Heap wind,’ he repeated, ‘old trail easy.’  He pointed ahead, ’No trail!’”

“He meant, I suppose,” Hamilton interjected, “that if you doubled on your tracks the trail would have been broken before, and it would be easy going.”

“That’s the bull’s-eye, and if a storm did come up we’d have a trail to follow and not get lost.”

“Did you go back?”

“I did not.  I figured that while we were about a day’s journey to a settlement either way, we were perhaps an hour nearer where we were goin’ than where we had come from, an’ that perhaps the storm would hold off long enough for us to make it.  Those storms last for days, sometimes, an’ we’d have the trip to make anyway, even if we did go back.  Besides, I didn’t want to lose the time.  ‘No, Billy,’ I called to the Siwash, ‘go on!’