"So it depends on Harold, does it? I believe his snowshoes are here. Harold left rather hurriedly--and I don't think he took them." "What everything depends on--is getting out. Getting out quickly. The longer we stay here, without food, the more certain death is. I know I can't walk and you can't see. We have no food--except enough for one meal, perhaps--but we've got to take a chance on that. Bill, Harold is waiting, right now--probably in the little cabin where he sleeps--for a chance to get those shoes. He's helpless without them. When he gets them, he can go to the Yuga--enlist more of his breed friends--and wait in ambush for us, just as he said. He's hoping we've forgotten about them. I am sure he didn't take the shoes. They were behind the stove last night." To make sure, Bill groped his way across the cabin and found not only Harold's shoes, but his own and Virginia's, bringing them all back to her side. "What's now, Little Corporal?" he asked. "As soon as it gets light enough for him to see, I want you to go out the cabin door. Turn at once into the brush at your right, so he can't shoot you with the rifle. Then come around to the side of the cabin and re-enter through the window. You can feel your way, and I can guide you by my voice, but you mustn't go more than a few feet or you'll get bewildered. The moment he thinks you are gone, he'll come--not only to get his snowshoes but to gloat over me. I know him now! I can't understand why I didn't know him before. And then--we've got to take him by surprise." "And then----?" Quickly, with few words, she told him the rest of her plot. It was wholly simple, and at least it held a fighting chance. He was not blind to the deadly three-day battle that they would have to wage against starvation and cold, in case this immediate part of their plot was a success. But the slightest chance when death was the only alternative was worth the trial. Very carefully and softly Bill went to work to loosen the window so that he could take it out. It was secured by nails, but with such tools as he had in the cabin, he soon had it free. Then he lifted out the window, putting it back loosely so that he could remove it in a second's time. There was no wisdom in leaving it open until morning. The bitter cold without was waiting for just that chance. He secured certain thongs of rawhide--left over from the moose skin that he had used for snowshoe webs--and put them in his coat pocket. Then he made a little bed for the girl, on the floor and against the wall, exactly in front and opposite the doorway. It was noticeable, too, that he restored her pistol to her hand. "I don't think you'll need it," he told her, "but I want you to have it anyway--in case of an emergency." There was nothing to do thereafter but to build up the fire and wait for dawn.