He measured the distance between himself and the sledge.  It was, perhaps, a dozen paces.  The dogs were still standing, tangled a little in their traces,—­eight of them,—­wide-chested, thin at the groins, a wolfish horde, built for endurance and speed.  On the sledge was a quarter of a ton of his Majesty’s mail.  Toward this Breault began to creep slowly and with great pain.  A hand inside of him seemed crushing the fiber of his lung, so that the blood oozed out of his mouth.  When he reached the sledge there were many red patches in the snow behind him.  He opened with considerable difficulty a small dunnage sack, and after fumbling a bit took there-from a pencil attached to a long red string, and a soiled envelope.

For the first time a change came upon his countenance—­a ghastly smile.  And above his hissing breath, that gushed between his lips with the sound of air pumped through the fine mesh of a colander, there rose a still more ghastly croak of exultation and of triumph.  Laboriously he wrote.  A few words, and the pencil dropped from his stiffening fingers into the snow.  Around his neck he wore a long red scarf held together by a big brass pin, and to this pin he fastened securely the envelope.

This much done,—­the mystery of his death solved for those who might some day find him,—­the ordinary man would have contented himself by yielding up life’s struggle with as little more physical difficulty as possible.  Breault was not ordinary.  He was, in his one way, efficiency incarnate.  He made space for himself on the sledge, and laid himself out in that space with great care, first taking pains to fasten about his thighs two babiche thongs that were employed at times to steady his freight.  Then he ran his left arm through one of the loops of the stout mail-chest.  By taking these precautions he was fairly secure in the belief that after he was dead and frozen stiff no amount of rough trailing by the dogs could roll him from the sledge.

In this conjecture he was right.  When the starved and exhausted malamutes dragged their silent burden into the Northwest Mounted Police outpost barracks at Crooked Bow twenty-four hours later, an ax and a sapling bar were required to pry Francois Breault from his bier.  Previous to this process, however, Sergeant Fitzgerald, in charge at the outpost, took possession of the soiled envelope pinned to Breault’s red scarf.  The information it bore was simple, and yet exceedingly definite.  Few men in dying as Breault had died could have made the matter easier for the police.

On the envelope he had written: 

Jan Thoreau shot me and left me for dead.  Have just strength to write this—­no more.

Francois Breault.

It was epic—­a colossal monument to this man, thought Sergeant
Fitzgerald, as they pried the frozen body loose.

To Corporal Blake fell the unpleasant task of going after Jan Thoreau.  Unpleasant, because Breault’s starved huskies and frozen body brought with them the worst storm of the winter.  In the face of this storm Blake set out, with the Sergeant’s last admonition in his ears: