“And you—­are a fool!” gritted Blake.  “Good God, what a fool!”

“Drive—­and shut up!”

Blake snapped his whip and gave a short, angry command in Eskimo.  The dogs sprang from their bellies to their feet and at another command were off over the trail.  From the door of the cabin the Eskimo’s little eyes shone with a watery eagerness as he watched them go.  Celie caught a last glimpse of him as she looked back and her hands gripped more firmly the rifle which lay across her lap.  Philip had given her the rifle and it had piled upon her a mighty responsibility.  He had meant that she should use it if the emergency called for action, and that she was to especially watch Blake.  Her eyes did not leave the outlaw’s broad back as he ran on a dozen paces ahead of the dogs.  She was ready for him if he tried to escape, and she would surely fire.  Running close to her side Philip observed the tight grip of her hands on the weapon, and saw one little thumb pinched up against the safety ready for instant action.  He laughed, and for a moment she looked up at him, flushing suddenly when she saw the adoration in his face.

“Blake’s right—­I’m a fool,” he cried down at her in a low voice that thrilled with his worship of her.  “I’m a fool for risking you, sweetheart.  By going the other way I’d have you forever.  They wouldn’t follow far into the south, if at all.  Mebby you don’t realize what we’re doing by hitting back to that father of yours.  Do you?”

She smiled.

“And mebby when we get there we’ll find him dead,” he added.  “Dead or alive, everything is up to Blake now and you must help me watch him.”

He pantomimed this caution by pointing to Blake and the rifle.  Then he dropped behind.  Over the length of sledge and team he was thirty paces from Blake.  At that distance he could drop him with a single shot from the Colt.

They were following the trail already made by the meat-laden sledge, and the direction was northwest.  It was evident that Blake was heading at least in the right direction and Philip believed that it would be but a short time before they would strike the Coppermine.  Once on the frozen surface of the big stream that flowed into the Arctic and their immediate peril of an ambuscade would be over.  Blake was surely aware of that.  If he had in mind a plan for escaping it must of necessity take form before they reached the river.

“Where the forest thinned out and the edge of the Barren crept in Philip ran at Celie’s side, but when the timber thickened and possible hiding places for their enemies appeared in the trail ahead he was always close to Blake, with the big Colt held openly in his hand.  At these times Celie watched the back trail.  From her vantage on the sledge her alert eyes took in every bush and thicket to right and left of them, and when Philip was near or behind her she was looking at least a rifle-shot ahead of Blake.  For three-quarters of an hour they had followed the single sledge trail when Blake suddenly gave a command that stopped the dogs.  They had reached a crest which overlooked a narrow finger of the treeless Barren on the far side of which, possibly a third of a mile distant, was a dark fringe of spruce timber.  Blake pointed toward this timber.  Out of it was rising a dark column of resinous smoke.