system, range upon range, seemed to trend to the northwest, cutting athwart the course to the open country reported by La Perle.  The effect was as if the mountains conspired to thrust back the traveler toward the west and the Yukon.  Smoke wondered how many men in the past, approaching as he had approached, had been turned aside by that forbidding aspect.  La Perle had not been turned aside, but, then, La Perle had crossed over from the eastern slope of the Rockies.

Until midnight Smoke maintained a huge fire for the guidance of Shorty.  And in the morning, waiting with camp broken and dogs harnessed for the first break of light, Smoke took up the pursuit.  In the narrow pass of the canyon, his lead-dog pricked up its ears and whined.  Then Smoke came upon the Indians, six of them, coming toward him.  They were traveling light, without dogs, and on each man’s back was the smallest of pack outfits.  Surrounding Smoke, they immediately gave him several matters for surprise.  That they were looking for him was clear.  That they talked no Indian tongue of which he knew a word was also quickly made clear.  They were not white Indians, though they were taller and heavier than the Indians of the Yukon basin.  Five of them carried the old-fashioned, long-barreled Hudson Bay Company musket, and in the hands of the sixth was a Winchester rifle which Smoke knew to be Shorty’s.

Nor did they waste time in making him a prisoner.  Unarmed himself, Smoke could only submit.  The contents of the sled were distributed among their own packs, and he was given a pack composed of his and Shorty’s sleeping-furs.  The dogs were unharnessed, and when Smoke protested, one of the Indians, by signs, indicated a trail too rough for sled-travel.  Smoke bowed to the inevitable, cached the sled end-on in the snow on the bank above the stream, and trudged on with his captors.  Over the divide to the north they went, down to the spruce-trees which Smoke had glimpsed the preceding afternoon.  They followed the stream for a dozen miles, abandoning it when it trended to the west and heading directly eastward up a narrow tributary.

The first night was spent in a camp which had been occupied for several days.  Here was cached a quantity of dried salmon and a sort of pemmican, which the Indians added to their packs.  From this camp a trail of many snow-shoes led off—­Shorty’s captors, was Smoke’s conclusion; and before darkness fell he succeeded in making out the tracks Shorty’s narrower snow-shoes had left.  On questioning the Indians by signs, they nodded affirmation and pointed to the north.

Always, in the days that followed, they pointed north; and always the trail, turning and twisting through a jumble of upstanding peaks, trended north.  Everywhere, in this bleak snow-solitude, the way seemed barred, yet ever the trail curved and coiled, finding low divides and avoiding the higher and untraversable chains.  The snow-fall was deeper than in the lower valleys, and every step of the way was snow-shoe work.  Furthermore, Smoke’s captors, all young men, traveled light and fast; and he could not forbear the prick of pride in the knowledge that he easily kept up with them.  They were travel-hardened and trained to snow-shoes from infancy; yet such was his condition that the traverse bore no more of ordinary hardship to him than to them.