experience hugely.  Day was just fairly breaking over the forests when they turned into the white trail, already beaten hard by the passing of many dogs and sledges, that led from Le Pas for a hundred miles to the camp on the Wekusko.  As they struck the trail the dogs strained harder at their traces, with Jackpine’s whip curling and snapping over their backs until they were leaping swiftly and with unbroken rhythm of motion over the snow.  Then the Cree gathered in his whip and ran close to the leader’s flank, his moccasined feet taking the short, quick, light steps of the trained forest runner, his chest thrown a little out, his eyes on the twisting trail ahead.  It was a glorious ride, and in the exhilaration of it Howland forgot to smoke the cigar that he held between his fingers.  His blood thrilled to the tireless effort of the grayish-yellow pack of magnificent brutes ahead of him; he watched the muscular play of their backs and legs, the eager out-reaching of their wolfish heads, their half-gaping jaws, and from them he looked at Jackpine.  There was no effort in his running.  His black hair swept back from the gray of his cap; like the dogs there was music in his movement, the beauty of strength, of endurance, of manhood born to the forests, and when the dogs finally stopped at the foot of a huge ridge, panting and half exhausted, Howland quickly leaped from the sledge and for the first time spoke to the Indian.

“That was glorious, Jackpine!” he cried.  “But, good Lord, man, you’ll kill the dogs!”

Jackpine grinned.

“They go sixt’ mile in day lak dat,” He grinned.

“Sixty miles!”

In his admiration for the wolfish looking beasts that were carrying him through the wilderness Howland put out a hand to stroke one of them on the head.  With a warning cry the Indian jerked him back just as the dog snapped fiercely at the extended hand.

“No touch huskie!” he exclaimed.  “Heem half wolf—­half dog—­work hard but no lak to be touch!”

“Wow!” exclaimed Howland.  “And they’re the sweetest looking pups I ever laid eyes on.  I’m certainly running up against some strange things in this country!”

He was dead tired when night came.  And yet never in all his life had he enjoyed a day so much as this one.  Twenty times he had joined Jackpine in running beside the sledge.  In their intervals of rest he had even learned to snap the thirty-foot caribou-gut lash of the dog-whip.  He had asked a hundred questions, had insisted on Jackpine’s smoking a cigar at every stop, and had been so happy and so altogether companionable that half of the Cree’s hereditary reticence had been swept away before his unbounded enthusiasm.  He helped to build their balsam shelter for the night, ate a huge supper of moose meat, hot-stone biscuits, beans and coffee, and then, just as he had stretched himself out in his furs for the night, he remembered Gregson’s warning.  He sat up and called to Jackpine, who was putting a fresh log on the big fire in front of the shelter.