For a long time after this the shadow of death hung over the Frenchman’s trapping-shack.  To Boileau, with his brotherly sympathy and regret that his poison-bait had brought calamity, Peter was “just dog.”  But when at last he saw the strong shoulders of the grim-faced stranger shaking over Peter’s paralyzed body and listened to the sobbing grief that broke in passionate protest from his white lips, he drew back a little awed.  It seemed for a time that Peter was dead; and in those moments Jolly Roger put his arms about him and buried his despairing face in Peter’s scraggly neck, calling in a wild fit of anguish for him to come back, to live, to open his eyes again.  Boileau, crossing himself, felt of Peter’s body and McKay heard his voice over him, saying that the dog was not dead, but that his heart was beating steadily and that he thought the last stiffening blow of the poison was over.  To McKay it was like bringing the dead back to life.  He raised his head and drew away his arms and knelt beside the bunk stunned and mutely hopeful while Boileau took his place and began dropping warm condensed milk down Peter’s throat.  In a little while Peter’s eyes opened and he gave a great sigh.

Boileau looked up and shrugged his shoulders.

“That was a good breath, m’sieu,” he said.  “What is left of the poison has done its worst.  He will live.”

A bit stupidly McKay rose to his feet.  He swayed a little, and for the first time sensed the hot tears that had blinded his eyes and wet his cheeks.  And then there came a sobbing laugh out of his throat and he went to the window of the Frenchman’s shack and stared out into the white world, seeing nothing.  He had stood in the presence of death many times before but never had that presence choked up his heart as in this hour when the soul of Peter, his comrade, had stood falteringly for a space half-way between the living and the dead.

When he turned from the window Boileau was covering Peter’s body with blankets and a warm bear skin.  And for many days thereafter Peter was nursed through the slow sickness which followed.

An early spring came this year in the northland.  South of the Reindeer waterway country the snows were disappearing late in March and ice was rotting the first week in April.  Winds came from the south and west and the sun was warmer and clearer than Boileau had ever known it at the winter’s end in Lost Lake country.  It was in this first week of April that Peter was able to travel, and McKay pointed his trail once more for Cragg’s Ridge

He left a part of his winter dunnage at Boileau’s shack and went on light, figuring to reach Cragg’s Ridge before the new “goose moon” had worn itself out in the west.  But for a week Peter lagged and until the darker red in the rims of his eyes cleared away Jolly Roger checked the impetus of his travel so that the goose moon had faded out and the “frog moon” of May was in its full before they came down the last slope that dipped from the Height of Land to the forests and lakes of the lower country.