Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/249

Rh the shelter of a thicket of scrub. "But they'll be enough grub fer them an* us, too. They's fifty pound of flour, an* seventy-five pound of bacon, and forty or fifty pound of beans, besides five hundred-odd pound of fish fer the dogs."

"We'll pull in there this afternoon," opined Connie as he split off some shavings, while Rickey attacked a near-by spruce with his axe. Dropping to his knees the boy thrust a match into his pile of shavings, but even as the tiny flame began to lick at the light, dry wood, he straightened swiftly and glanced toward the spot where a moment before the sound of Rickey's axe had rung upon the slender trunk of a dead spruce a dozen yards away.

The sound of the axe strokes had suddenly ceased and in his ears sounded a half-stifled grunt of surprise and pain. With his back toward the boy, Rickey leaned heavily upon the fallen tree-trunk, while his right hand wrenched to loosen something from the snow at his feet. With a jerk the man straightened, and Connie saw that his face showed yellowish white against the glistening background of snow. With a cry the boy leaped to his feet, as his eyes encountered the object