He watched for its reappearance, until all sorts of gray dawn shadows
danced before his eyes. Then he began slowly to crawl up the trail.
Some of the dull, paralytic ache was gone from his limbs, and as he
worked his blood began to warm them into new strength, until he stood
up and sniffed like an animal in the wind that was coming over the
ridge from the south.

There was something in that wind that thrilled him. It stung his
nostrils to a quick sensing of the nearness of something that was
human. He smelled smoke. In it there was the pungent odor of green
balsam, mixed with a faint perfume of pitch pine; and because the odor
of pitch grew stronger as he ascended, he knew that it was a small
fire that was making the smoke, with none of the fierce, dry woods to
burn up the smell. It was a fire hidden among the rocks, a tiny fire,
over which the fleeing missioner was cooking his breakfast.

Jan almost moaned aloud in his gladness, and the old mad strength
returned to his body. Near the summit of the ridge he picked up a
club. It was a short, thick club, with the heavy end knotted and
twisted.

Cautiously he lifted his face over the rocks, and looked out upon a
plateau, still deep in snow, swept bare by the winter's winds, and
covered with rocks and bushes. His face was so white that at a little
distance it might have been taken for a snow hare. It went whiter
when, a few yards away, he saw the fire, the man, and the dogs.

The man was close to the little blaze, his broad shoulders hunched
over, steadying a small pot over the flame. Beyond him were the dogs