The bottom of the valley was soggy with water, which the thick moss
held, spongelike, close to the surface. This water squirted out
from under his feet at every step, and each time he lifted a foot
the action culminated in a sucking sound as the wet moss
reluctantly released its grip. He picked his way from muskeg to
muskeg, and followed the other man's footsteps along and across the
rocky ledges which thrust like islets through the sea of moss.

Though alone, he was not lost. Farther on he knew he would come to
where dead spruce and fir, very small and weazened, bordered the
shore of a little lake, the TITCHIN-NICHILIE, in the tongue of the
country, the "land of little sticks." And into that lake flowed a
small stream, the water of which was not milky. There was rush-
grass on that stream - this he remembered well - but no timber, and
he would follow it till its first trickle ceased at a divide. He
would cross this divide to the first trickle of another stream,
flowing to the west, which he would follow until it emptied into
the river Dease, and here he would find a cache under an upturned
canoe and piled over with many rocks. And in this cache would be
ammunition for his empty gun, fish-hooks and lines, a small net -
all the utilities for the killing and snaring of food. Also, he
would find flour, - not much, - a piece of bacon, and some beans.

Bill would be waiting for him there, and they would paddle away
south down the Dease to the Great Bear Lake. And south across the
lake they would go, ever south, till they gained the Mackenzie.
And south, still south, they would go, while the winter raced
vainly after them, and the ice formed in the eddies, and the days
grew chill and crisp, south to some warm Hudson Bay Company post,
where timber grew tall and generous and there was grub without end.