“Well, say,” he remarked, admiringly, “but you do seem to ’ve bin up against it good an’ hard.”

Very briefly, and as though the matter barely called for mention, Dick explained, in answer to an inquiry, why he had to make a dead burden of the madman.

It seemed that when first his team had been reduced to one rather undersized dog he did arrange for his charge to walk.  And within an hour, having cunningly awaited his opportunity, the demented creature had leaped upon him from behind, exactly as a wolf might, and fastened his teeth in Dick’s neck.  That, though Dick said little of it, had been the beginning of a strange and terrible struggle, of which the sole observer was a single sled-dog.

To and fro in the trampled snow the men had swayed and fought for fully a quarter of an hour before Dick had finally mastered the madman and bound him hand and foot.  He was a big man, of muscular build, and madness had added hugely to his natural capabilities as a fighter.  Dick Vaughan’s bandaged neck, and his right thumb, bitten through to the bone, would permanently carry the marks of this poor wretch’s ferocity in that lonely struggle on the trail.

“Don’t seem right, somehow,” was Jim Willis’s comment.  “I guess I’d have had to put a bullet into him.”

“Ah no; that wouldn’t do at all,” said Dick.

He did not attempt to explain just why; and perhaps he hardly could have done so had he tried, for that would have involved some explanation of the pride and the traditions of the force in which he served, and those are things rarely spoken of by those who understand them best and are most influenced by them.

“And where might you be making for now?” asked Jim.

“Well, I’m bound for Edmonton.  But since I got down to this one little husky I’d thought of making Fort Vermilion, to see if I could raise a team there.”

“Aye.  Well, I was bound for steel at Edmonton, too, an’ I’ve bin reckoning on some such a place as Fort Vermilion since I lost my gun,” said Jim.  “I’m wholly tired o’ makin’ trail for these gentlemen behind”—­the howling of the wolves was still to be heard pretty frequently—­“without a shootin’-iron of any kind at all.”

“It seems to me we’re pretty well met, then,” said Dick, with a smile, “for I want what you’ve got, and you want what I’ve got.”

“Well, I was kind o’ figurin’ on it that sort of a way myself,” admitted Jim.  “If it suits you, I guess we can make out to rub along on your Jan an’ my dogs right through to Edmonton.”

In the end the order of the march was arranged thus:  two of Jim Willis’s dogs, with Jan to lead them, were harnessed to Dick’s sled, with the madman and Dick’s rugs for its load.  The remainder of Dick’s pack was loaded on Jim’s sled and drawn by Jim’s other three dogs, aided by the sole survivor of Dick’s team.  And in this order a start was made on the five-hundred-mile run to Edmonton.