When he went on, after their breakfast, he laughed at the thought of Breault discovering their trail.  The Ferret would be more than human to do that after what wind and storm and fire had done for them.

This first day of their pilgrimage into the southland was a day of glory from its beginning until the setting of the sun.  There was no cloud in the sky.  And it grew warmer, until Jolly Roger flung back the hood of his parkee and turned up the fur of his cap.  That night a million stars lighted the heaven.

After this first day and night nothing could break down the hope and confidence of Jolly Roger and his, dog.  Peter knew they were going south, in which direction lay everything he had ever yearned for; and each night beside their campfire McKay made a note with pencil and paper and measured the distance they had come and the distance they had yet to go.  Hope in a little while became certainty.  Into his mind urged no thought of changes that might have taken place at Cragg’s Ridge; or, if the thought did come, it caused him no uneasiness.  Now that Jed Hawkins was dead Nada would be with the little old Missioner in whose care he had left her, and not for an instant did a doubt cloud the growing happiness of his anticipations.  Breault and the hunters of the law were the one worry that lay ahead and behind him.  If he outwitted them he would find Nada waiting for him.

Day after day they kept south and west until they struck the Thelon; and then through a country unmapped, and at times terrific in its cold and storm, they fought steadily to the frozen regions of the Dubawnt waterways.  Only once in the first three weeks did they seek human company.  This was at a small Indian camp where Jolly Roger bartered for caribou meat and moccasins for Peter’s feet.  Twice between there and God’s Lake they stopped at trappers’ cabins.

It was early in March when they struck the Lost Lake country, three hundred miles from Cragg’s Ridge.

And here it was, buried under a blind of soft snow, that Peter nosed out the frozen carcass of a disemboweled buck which Boileau, the French trapper, had poisoned for wolves.  Jolly Roger had built a fire and was warming half a pint of deer tallow for a baking of bannock, when Peter dragged himself in, his rear legs already stiffening with the palsy of strychnine.  In a dozen seconds McKay had the warm tallow down Peter’s throat, to the last drop of it; and this he followed with another dose as quickly as he could heat it, and in the end Peter gave up what he had eaten.

Half an hour later Boileau, who was eating his dinner, jumped up in wonderment when the door of his cabin was suddenly opened by a grim and white-faced man who carried the limp body of a dog in his arms.