The last word, as it came from his lips, meant that nothing would stop them.  He almost shouted it.  And Peter answered.

In spite of their effort, darkness closed in on them.  With the first dusk of this night there came sudden lulls in which the blizzard seemed to have exhausted itself.  Jolly Roger read the signs.  By tomorrow there would be no storm and Breault the Ferret would be on the trail again, along with Porter and Tavish.

It was his old craft, his old cunning, that urged him to go on.  Strangely, he prayed for the blizzard not to give up the ghost.  Something must be accomplished before its fury was spent; and he was glad when after each lull he heard again the moaning and screeching of it over the open spaces, and the slashing together of spruce tops where there was cover.  In a chaos of gloom they came to the low ridge which reached across an open sweep of tundra to the finger of shelter where the cabin was built.  An hour later they were at its door.  Jolly Roger opened it and staggered in.  For a space he stood leaning against the wall while his lungs drank in the warmer air.  The intake of his breath made a whistling sound and he was surprised to find himself so near exhaustion.  He heard the thud of Peter’s body as it collapsed to the floor.

“Tired, Pied-Bot?”

It was difficult for his storm-beaten lips to speak the words.

Peter thumped his tail.  The rat-tap-tap of it came in one of those lulls of the storm which Jolly Roger had begun to dread.

“I hope it keeps up another two hours,” he said, wetting his lips to take the stiffness out of them.  “If it doesn’t—­”

He was thinking of Breault as he drew off his mittens and fumbled for a match.  It was Breault he feared.  The Ferret would find his cabin and his trail if the storm died out too soon.

He lighted the tin lamp on his table and after that, assured that wastefulness would cost him nothing now, he set two bear-drip candles going, one at each end of the cabin.  The illumination filled the single room.  There was little for it to reveal—­the table he had made, a chair, a battered little sheet-iron stove, and the humped up blanket in his bunk, under which he had stored the remainder of his possessions.  Back of the stove was a pile of dry wood, and in another five minutes the roar of flames in the chimney mingled with a fresh bluster of the wind outside.

Defying the exhaustion of limbs and body, Jolly Roger kept steadily at work.  He threw off his heavier garments as the freezing atmosphere of the room became warmer, and prepared for a feast.

“We’ll call it Christmas, and have everything we’ve got, Pied-Bot.  We’ll cook a quart of prunes instead of six.  No use stinting ourselves—­tonight!”