“This is a sure peach of a pickle, Smoke—­you listen to me.  An’ we got to go some to get out.  These is the real, blowed-in-the-glass, wild Indians.  They ain’t white, but their chief is.  He talks like a mouthful of hot mush, an’ if he ain’t full-blood Scotch they ain’t no such thing as Scotch in the world.  He’s the hi-yu, skookum top-chief of the whole caboodle.  What he says goes.  You want to get that from the start-off.  Danny McCan’s been tryin’ to get away from him for six years.  Danny’s all right, but he ain’t got go in him.  He knows a way out—­learned it on huntin’ trips—­to the west of the way you an’ me came.  He ain’t had the nerve to tackle it by his lonely.  But we can pull it off, the three of us.  Whiskers is the real goods, but he’s mostly loco just the same.”

“Who’s Whiskers?” Smoke queried, pausing in the wolfing-down of a hot strip of meat.

“Why, he’s the top geezer.  He’s the Scotcher.  He’s gettin’ old, an’ he’s sure asleep now, but he’ll see you to-morrow an’ show you clear as print what a measly shrimp you are on his stompin’-grounds.  These grounds belong to him.  You got to get that into your noodle.  They ain’t never been explored, nor nothin’, an’ they’re hisn.  An’ he won’t let you forget it.  He’s got about twenty thousand square miles of huntin’ country here all his own.  He’s the white Indian, him an’ the skirt.  Huh!  Don’t look at me that way.  Wait till you see her.  Some looker, an’ all white, like her dad—­he’s Whiskers.  An’ say, caribou!  I’ve saw ’em.  A hundred thousan’ of good running meat in the herd, an’ ten thousan’ wolves an’ cats a-followin’ an’ livin’ off the stragglers an’ the leavin’s.  We leave the leavin’s.  The herd’s movin’ to the east, an’ we’ll be followin’ ’em any day now.  We eat our dogs, an’ what we don’t eat we smoke ’n cure for the spring before the salmon-run gets its sting in.  Say, what Whiskers don’t know about salmon an’ caribou nobody knows, take it from me.”

“Here comes Whiskers lookin’ like he’s goin’ somewheres,” Shorty whispered, reaching over and wiping greasy hands on the coat of one of the sled-dogs.

It was morning, and the bachelors were squatting over a breakfast of caribou-meat, which they ate as they broiled.  Smoke glanced up and saw a small and slender man, skin-clad like any savage, but unmistakably white, striding in advance of a sled team and a following of a dozen Indians.  Smoke cracked a hot bone, and while he sucked out the steaming marrow gazed at his approaching host.  Bushy whiskers and yellowish gray hair, stained by camp smoke, concealed most of the face, but failed wholly to hide the gaunt, almost cadaverous, cheeks.  It was a healthy leanness, Smoke decided, as he noted the wide flare of the nostrils and the breadth and depth of chest that gave spaciousness to the guaranty of oxygen and life.

“How do you do,” the man said, slipping a mitten and holding out his bare hand.  “My name is Snass,” he added, as they shook hands.