his body, he staggered among the dogs, fastened them to the sledge,
and urged them down the mountain into the plain. There was soon no
sound of the sledge.

From a bush a dozen yards away a wondering moose-bird had watched the
terrible struggle. Now he hopped boldly upon Jan's motionless body,
and perked his head inquisitively as he examined the strange face,
covered with blood and twisted in torture.

The gray film of dawn dissolved itself into the white beginning of
day. Far to the south, a bit of the red sunrise was creeping into the
northern world.




CHAPTER IX

JEAN AND JAN


Half a mile down the ridge, where it sloped up gradually from the
forests and swamps of the plain, a team of powerful Malemutes were
running at the head of a toboggan. On the sledge was a young half-Cree
woman. Now beside the sledge, now at the lead of the dogs, cracking
his whip and shouting joyously, ran Jean de Gravois.

"Is it not beautiful, my Iowaka?" he cried for the hundredth time, in
Cree, leaping over a three-foot boulder in his boundless enthusiasm.
"Is this not the glorious world, with the sun just rising off there,