things--not merely to try. He was to go out into the northern night
called winter, feel his way up the Athabasca, over the Smoky, follow the
Peace River, and find the pass through the Rockies.

If the simple story of that winter campaign could be written out it
would be finer than fiction. But it will never be. Only Smith the
Silent knows, and he won't tell.

Sometimes, over the pipe, he forgets and gives me glimpses into the
winter camp, with the sun going out like a candle: the hastily made camp
with the half-breed spotting the dry wood against the coming moment when
night would drop over the forest like a curtain over a stage; the
"lean-to" between the burning logs, where he dozes or dreams, barely
beyond the reach of the flames; the silence all about, Jaquis pulling at
his pipe, and the huskies sleeping in the snow like German babies under
the eiderdown. Sometimes, out of the love of bygone days, he tells of
long toilsome journeys with the sun hiding behind clouds out of which an
avalanche of snow falls, with nothing but the needle to tell where he
hides; of hungry dogs and half starved horses, and lakes and rivers
fifty and a hundred miles out of the way.

Once, he told me, he sent an engineer over a low range to spy out a
pass. By the maps and other data they figured that he would be gone
three days, but a week went by and no word from the pathfinder. Ten days
and no news. On the thirteenth day, when Smith was preparing to go in
search of the wanderer, the running gear of the man and the framework of
the dogs came into camp. He was able to smile and say to Smith that he
had been ten days without food, save a little tea. For the dogs he had
had nothing.