The gate creaked to its close behind us as the dogs humped against the collars. A hundred yards, and the glimmering night enfolded us; the stockade became a vague blur in the hazy white. Barreau swung sharp to the west. This course he held for ten minutes or more. Then down to the river, across it and up to the south flat. Here he turned again and curtly bidding me drive the dogs, tramped on ahead peering down at the unbroken snow as he went. We plodded thus till we were once more abreast of the stockade. For a moment I lost sight of Barreau; then he called to me and I came up with him standing with his back to the cutting wind that still thrust from out the east like a red-hot spear. He took the dog-whip from me without a word, swinging the leaders southward. In the uncertain light I could see no mark in the snow. But under my webbed shoes there was an uneven feeling, as if it were trampled. We bore straight across the flat and angled up a long hill, and on the crest of it plunged into the gloomy aisles of the forest. Once among the spruce, Barreau halted the near-winded dogs for a breathing spell. “We will go a few miles and make camp for the night,” he said. “This is Montell’s trail.” “The more miles the better,” I rejoined. “I’m tired, but I have no wish to hobnob with the Policemen.” “Faugh!” he burst out. “There are no Policemen. That was as much a bluff as my hundred well-armed Indians. Le Noir is a poser. Do you think I’d ever have gotten outside that stockade if there had been a redcoat at his call? Oh, no! That would have been the very chance for him—one that he would have been slow to overlook. I know him. He’s well named the Black Factor. His heart is as black as his whiskers and the truth is not in him—when a lie can make or save a dollar for his god—which is the Company. We have not quite done with him yet, I imagine. Hup there, you huskies—the trail is long and we are two days behind!” CHAPTER XVIII—THE LONG ARM OF THE COMPANY The fourth day out, at a noon camp by a spring that still defied the frost, Barreau straightened up suddenly from his stooping over the frying-pan. “Listen,” he said. His ears were but little keener than mine, for even as he spoke I caught a sound that was becoming familiar from daily hearing: the soft _pluff_, _pluff_ of snowshoes. In the thick woods, where no sweeping winds could swirl it here and there and pile it in hard smooth banks, the snow was spread evenly, a loose, three-foot layer, as yet uncrusted. Upon this the foot of man gave but little sound, even where there was a semblance of trail. So that almost in the instant that we heard and turned our heads we could see those who came toward us. Three men and two women—facing back upon the trail we followed.