Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/105

Rh harness. With a gasp of understanding he loosed him, holding the steel menace still, and Okimow shot across the clearing like a brown log launched into space. The grip of numb dread lessened in Kennedy, and he realised that the cold was eating into his bones, and that, in the frosty metallic light, the held-up men looked grey.

By signs he got them moving, and the four took the treadmill trail over the narrow clearing, round after round; the white boy with the blue scared eyes driving the swarthy, shaggy men of alien tongue and breed.

Shivering and complaining the women made fires, and presently the smell of roast moose-flesh stirred Kennedy's vitals until he shut his nostrils against it. And the tension of fear and hunger and weariness grew. It had grown to the edge of hysteria when Dick came back, walking heavily. He was half-stripped in the bitter cold, and he staggered as he swung up his fur artiki from the sled and bisected Kennedy's march.

"Okimow's watching Abraham," he said. "I left him most of my dunnage. Get those men over to the fires and feed. Sharp! We've got to go after him."

Kennedy asked one question as his teeth met in the smoking meat.

"Did Okimow help any?" he said. And Dick answered, sitting with Abraham's rifle across his knees:

"Just about saved my life, I guess."

That was all that Kennedy ever knew in words of the struggle in the forest; but imagination told him a little more when they lifted the bound man on to the sled in the dark, and Dick's clipped tones of exhaustion bade him stand clear of the snapping jaws and the writhing, taloned hands. All that had been man in Abraham had given way, and he foamed like an animal in a trap; raving in an unknown tongue, and glaring with starting eyes.

Dick showed neither pity nor horror. He engineered the burdened sled into a shack; covered it warm for the night, and left it. Then he and Kennedy took sentry-go in turns until the dawn broke. And at dawn they buried the Isaac of a later history; baring the ground of snow and building the body in against wolf and coyote with rocks brought