Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/263

Rh your own trade." Lennox shuddered once on his place on the floor.

"I would n't have to worry about those letters then, would I? They are somewhere in the house, and they'd be burned to ashes. But that is n't all that would be burned. You could maybe crawl out, but you could n't carry the guns, and you could n't carry the pantry full of food. You 're nearly eighty miles up here from the nearest occupied house, with two pair of snowshoes for the three of you and one dinky pistol. And you can't walk at all. It would be a nice pickle, would n't it? Would n't you have a fat chance of getting down to civilization?"

The voice no longer held steady. It trembled with passion. This was no idle threat. The brain had already seized upon the scheme with every intention of carrying it out. Outside the snow glittered in the sunlight, and pine limbs bowed with their load; overhung with that curious winter silence that, once felt, returns often in dreams. The wilderness lay stark and bare, stripped of all delusion—not only in the snow world outside but in the hearts of these two men, its sons.

"I have only one hope," Lennox replied. "I hope, unknown to me, that Dan has already dispatched those letters. The arm of the