provision was fifteen pounds of flour; four dozen eggs he carried
in one pound of egg powder; twenty-eight pounds of potatoes in
four pounds of the dehydrated article; four pounds of onions in a
quarter of a pound of the concentration, and so on through the
list.

He laughed a little grimly as he thought of this concentrated
efficiency in the pack on his shoulders. In a curious sort of way
it reminded him of other days, and he wondered what some of his
old-time friends would say if he could, by some magic endowment,
assemble them here for a feast on the trail. He wondered
especially what Mignon Davenport would say--and do. P-f-f-f! He
could see the blue-blooded horror in her aristocratic face! That
wind from over the Barren would curdle the life in her veins. She
would shrivel up and die. He considered himself a fairly good
judge in the matter, for once upon a time he thought that he was
going to marry her. Strange why he should think of her now, he
told himself; but for all that he could not get rid of her for a
time. And thinking of her, his mind traveled back into the old
days, even as he followed over the hidden trail of Bram.
Undoubtedly a great many of his old friends had forgotten him.
Five years was a long time, and friendship in the set to which he
belonged was not famous for its longevity. Nor love, for that
matter. Mignon had convinced him of that. He grimaced, and in the
teeth of the wind he chuckled. Fate was a playful old chap. It was
a good joke he had played on him--first a bit of pneumonia, then a
set of bad lungs afflicted with that "galloping" something-or-other
that hollows one's cheeks and takes the blood out of one's
veins. It was then that the horror had grown larger and larger
each day in Mignon's big baby-blue eyes, until she came out with