Page:Dave Porter in the Far North.djvu/222

196, and all hands walked. Once they passed a man on horseback, wrapped up in furs. He stared at them curiously.

"Stop, please!" called out Granbury Lapham, in Norwegian, and the traveler came to a halt. When questioned he said he had heard about the strange party of six men who had come into that part of Norway, and he had also heard that the authorities were watching them.

"But where did they go to?" asked the Englishman.

That the man could not tell, but said they might possible find out at Bojowak, from a man named Quicklabokjav.

"What a name!" cried Dave.

"It's bad enough—but I have heard worse," answered Granbury Lapham. "Some of the Norwegian names are such that a person speaking the English tongue cannot pronounce them correctly."

They were now more anxious than ever to reach Bojowak, which Hendrik said was a village of about sixty or seventy inhabitants. The people were mostly wood-choppers, working for a lumber company that had located in that territory two years before.

The wind was beginning to rise again. This blew the snow down from the mountain side, and occasionally the landscape was all but blotted out thereby. They struggled along as best they could,