The cabin loomed up amid a shelter of spruce like a black shadow, and when they climbed up the bank to it they found the snow drifted high under the window and against the door.

“He’s gone—­Pierre, I mean,” said DeBar over his shoulder as he kicked the snow away.  “He hasn’t come back from New Year’s at Fort Smith.”

The door had no lock or bolt, and they entered.  It was yet too dark for them to see distinctly, and DeBar struck a match.  On the table was a tin oil lamp, which he lighted.  It revealed a neatly kept interior about a dozen feet square, with two bunks, several chairs, a table, and a sheet iron stove behind which was piled a supply of wood.  DeBar pointed to a shelf on which were a number of tin boxes, their covers weighted down by chunks of wood.

“Grub!” he said.

And Philip, pointing to the wood, added, “Fire—­fire and grub.”

There was something in his voice which the other could not fail to understand, and there was an uncomfortable silence as Philip put fuel into the stove and DeBar searched among the food cans.

“Here’s bannock and cooked meat—­frozen,” he said, “and beans.”

He placed tins of each on the stove and then sat down beside the roaring fire, which was already beginning to diffuse a heat.  He held out his twisted and knotted hands, blue and shaking with cold, and looked up at Philip, who stood opposite him.

He spoke no words, and yet there was something in his eyes which made the latter cry out softly, and with a feeling which he tried to hide:  “DeBar, I wish to God it was over!”

“So do I,” said DeBar.

He rubbed his hands and twisted them until the knuckles cracked.

“I’m not afraid and I know that you’re not, Phil,” he went on, with his eyes on the top of the stove, “but I wish it was over, just the same.  Somehow I’d a’most rather stay up here another year or two than—­kill you.”

“Kill me!” exclaimed Philip, the old fire leaping back into his veins.

DeBar’s quiet voice, his extraordinary self-confidence, sent a flush of anger into Philip’s face.

“You’re talking to me again as if I were a child, DeBar.  My instructions were to bring you back, dead or alive—­and I’m going to!”

“We won’t quarrel about it, Phil,” replied the outlaw as quietly as before.  “Only I wish it wasn’t you I’m going to fight.  I’d rather kill half-a-dozen like the others than you.”

“I see,” said Philip, with a perceptible sneer in his voice.  “You’re trying to work upon my sympathy so that I will follow your suggestion—­and go back.  Eh?”

“You’d be a coward if you did that,” retorted DeBar quickly.  “How are we going to settle it, Phil?”

Philip drew his frozen revolver from its holster and held it over the stove.

“If I wasn’t a crack shot, and couldn’t center a two-inch bull’s-eye three times out of four at thirty paces, I’d say pistols.”