Bram was not yet mad.  And yet he was fighting the thing that had killed Pelletier.  Loneliness.  The fate forced upon him by the law because he had killed a man.

His face was again heavy and unemotional when with a gesture he made Philip understand that he was to ride on the sledge.  Bram himself went to the head of the pack.  At the sharp clack of his Eskimo the wolves strained in their traces.  Another moment and they were off, with Bram in the lead.

Philip was amazed at the pace set by the master of the pack.  With head and shoulders hunched low he set off in huge swinging strides that kept the team on a steady trot behind him.  They must have traveled eight miles an hour.  For a few minutes Philip could not keep his eyes from Bram and the gray backs of the wolves.  They fascinated him, and at the same time the sight of them—­straining on ahead of him into a voiceless and empty world—­filled him with a strange and overwhelming compassion.  He saw in them the brotherhood of man and beast.  It was splendid.  It was epic.  And to this the Law had driven them!

His eyes began to take in the sledge then.  On it was a roll of bear skins—­Bram’s blankets.  One was the skin of a polar bear.  Near these skins were the haunches of caribou meat, and so close to him that he might have reached out and touched it was Bram’s club.  At the side of the club lay a rifle.  It was of the old breech-loading, single-shot type, and Philip wondered why Bram had destroyed his own modern weapon instead of keeping it in place of this ancient Company relic.  It also made him think of night before last, when he had chosen for his refuge a tree out in the starlight.

The club, even more than the rifle, bore marks of use.  It was of birch, and three feet in length.  Where Bram’s hand gripped it the wood was worn as smooth and dark as mahogany.  In many places the striking end of the club was dented as though it had suffered the impact of tremendous blows, and it was discolored by suggestive stains.  There was no sign of cooking utensils and no evidence of any other food but the caribou flesh.  On the rear of the sledge was a huge bundle of pitch-soaked spruce tied with babiche, and out of this stuck the crude handle of an ax.

Of these things the gun and the white bear skin impressed Philip most.  He had only to lean forward a little to reach the rifle, and the thought that he could scarcely miss the broad back of the man ahead of him struck him all at once with a sort of mental shock.  Bram had evidently forgotten the weapon, or was utterly confident in the protection of the pack.  Or—­had he faith in his prisoner?  It was this last question that Philip would liked to have answered in the affirmative.  He had no desire to harm Bram.  He had even a less desire to escape him.  He had forgotten, so far as his personal intentions were concerned, that he was an agent of the Law—­under oath to bring in to Divisional Headquarters Bram’s body dead or alive.  Since night before last Bram had ceased to be a criminal for him.  He was like Pelletier, and through him he was entering upon a strange adventure which held for him already the thrill and suspense of an anticipation which he had never experienced in the game of man-hunting.