Moncrossen, by making use of old tote-roads, saved about forty of the eighty miles of road building which lay between Hilarity and the Blood River. Toward the end of October the work was completed, the camp buildings erected, and a brush and log dam thrown across the river at the narrows of a white water rapid. Swampers and axe-men set to work building skidways and cross-hauls, and the banks of the river were cleared for the roll-ways. The ground was still bare of snow, but the sawyers were "laying them down," and the logs were banked at the skidways. Then one morning the snow came. Quietly it fell, in big, downy flakes that floated lazily to earth from the even gray of the cloud-spread sky, tracing aimless, zigzag patterns against the dark green background of the pines, and covering the brown needles of the forest floor and the torn mold of the skidways with a soft blanket of white. The men sprang eagerly to their work--heartened by the feel of the snow. The tingling air was filled with familiar man-sounds--the resonant stroke of axes, and the long crash of falling trees, the metallic rattle of chains, the harsh rasp of saws, and the good-natured calls of men in rude banter; sounds that rang little and thin through the mighty silence of the forest. Gradually the flakes hardened and the zigzag patterns resolved themselves into long, threadlike lines which slanted earthward with a soft, hissing sound. Fast it fell, and faster, until the background disappeared, and all the world was a swift-moving riot of white. It was a real snow now--a snow of value which buried the soft blanket of the feathery flakes under a stable covering which would pack hard under the heavy runners of the wide log sleds. It lodged in thick masses in the trees whose limbs bent under the weight, and the woods rang to the cries of the sawyers when the tottering of a mighty pine sent a small avalanche hurtling through the lower branches, half-burying them in its white smother. As the early darkness of the North country settled about them the men plowed heavily to the bunk-house through a foot and a half of fresh-fallen snow--and still it snowed. CHAPTER XI BILL HITS THE TRAIL In a long-abandoned shack midway between Moncrossen's Blood River camp and Hilarity, Bill Carmody hugged close the rusty, broken stove. All day he had tramped northward, guided through the maze of abandoned roads by the frozen ruts of Moncrossen's tote wagons, and it was long after dark when he camped in the northernmost of the old shacks with civilization, as represented by Hilarity's deserted buildings and the jug-tilting, barrel-head conclave of Hod Burrage's store, forty miles to the southward. It had been a hard day--this first day of his new life in the Northland. And now, foot-sore, dog-tired, and dispirited, he sat close and fed sticks to his guttering fire which burned sullenly and flared red for want of draft.