"There are some crimes for which there ain't no punishment but one, Hanky. There's no power on this earth, bar death, that'll stop me from gitting D'Arcy. If I don't come back before the break-up you can take it that he saw me coming before I got him." He thrust his hands into the big mittens strung to his shoulders, and nodding grimly went through the door. Ten minutes later he was cracking the new dog-whip over the backs of his yelping team, and mounting the high bank heading for the North once more. There is nothing more exciting than a manhunt when the pursuer is convinced that his cause is just, and the punishment he intends to inflict well-merited. Jim, peering through the blinding snow, saw in imagination the man he sought, all unconscious of the swift justice that was coming to him from out of the wilderness. This was man's law, whatever the written law might be. Not for one instant did his determination waver or his conviction falter. D'Arcy had partaken of forbidden fruit--partaken of it consciously, without regard for any suffering it might cause to others--and D'Arcy must pay the penalty! It was a primitive argument and one that appealed to passions, but he was in many respects still a primitive man, with primitive ideas of right and justice. That law was good enough. It had served through all his experience of Western life, and would serve now! The storm developed in fury, but still he drove the howling, unwilling dogs into the teeth of it. Icicles were hanging from his two weeks' growth of beard, and thick snow covered him from head to foot. Extraordinary luck favored him, for the snags and pitfalls were innumerable, and any deviation from the old obliterated trail might launch the whole outfit down into an abyss. Fortunately he struck the river again without such a catastrophe happening. The snow ceased to fall and the sky cleared. The red rim of the sun peeped over the horizon, flooding the landscape with translucent light. Before him lay the snow-clad Yukon, broad and gigantic, running between its high wooded banks, contrary to all precedents, Northwards. Amid the maze of peaks and valleys, high up on the Endicott Mountains, a strange affray was taking place. In a small hut, sandwiched between two perpendicular ice-walls, three men crouched at holes newly bored through the log sides. They were D'Arcy and his two companions, Lonagon and Shanks.