“I’ll be square.  Bill!” he cried.  “I swear that I’ll be square—­on those conditions.  If we find grub, and live, we’ll fight it out—­alone—­and the best man wins.  But I’ve had food today, and you’re starving.  Eat that and I’ll still be in better condition than you.  Eat it, and we’ll smoke.  Praise God I’ve got my pipe and tobacco!”

They settled back close in the lee of the drift, and the wind swirled white clouds of snow-mist over their heads, while DeBar ate his bird and Philip smoked.  The food that went down DeBar’s throat was only a morsel, but it put new life into him, and he gathered fresh armfuls of sticks and sapling boughs until the fire burned Philip’s face and his drying clothes sent up clouds of steam.  Once, a hundred yards out in the plain, Philip heard the outlaw burst into a snatch of wild forest song as he pulled down a dead stub.

“Seems good to have comp’ny,” he said, when he came back with his load.  “My God, do you know I’ve never felt quite like this—­so easy and happy like, since years and years?  I wonder if it is because I know the end is near?”

“There’s still hope,” replied Philip.

“Hope!” cried DeBar.  “It’s more than hope, man.  It’s a certainty for me—­the end, I mean.  Don’t you see, Phil—­” He came and sat down close to the other on the sledge, and spoke as if he had known him for years.  “It’s got to be the end for me, and I guess that’s what makes me cheerful like.  I’m going to tell you about it, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind; I want to hear,” said Philip, and he edged a little nearer, until they sat shoulder to shoulder.

“It’s got to be the end,” repeated DeBar, in a low voice.  “If we get out of this, and fight, and you win, it’ll be because I’m dead, Phil.  D’ye understand?  I’ll be dead when the fight ends, if you win.  That’ll be one end.”

“But if you win, Bill.”

A flash of joy shot into DeBar’s eyes.

“Then that’ll be the other end,” he said more softly still.  He pointed to the big Mackenzie hound.  “I said he was next to my best friend an earth, Phil.  The other—­is a girl—­who lived back there—­when it happened, years and years ago.  She’s thirty now, and she’s stuck to me, and prayed for me, and believed in me for—­a’most since we were kids together, an’ she’s written to me—­’Frank Symmonds’—­once a month for ten years.  God bless her heart!  That is what’s kept me alive, and in every letter she’s begged me to let her come to me, wherever I was.  But—­I guess the devil didn’t get quite all of me, for I couldn’t, ‘n’ wouldn’t.  But I’ve give in now, and we’ve fixed it up between us.  By this time she’s on her way to my brothers in South America, and if I win—­when we fight—­I’m going where she is.  And that’s the other end, Phil, so you see why I’m happy.  There’s sure to be an end of it for me—­soon.”

He bowed his wild, unshorn head in his mittened hands, and for a time there was silence between them.