Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/261

Rh jaw and narrowed eyes scanned the bleak barrens for sight of the patch of scrub timber that Rickey had told him fringed the broad depression, in the centre of which old man Wurtz had built his cabin. The dogs topped a long, low ridge, and before him, a half-mile away, the boy saw the timber—a scraggling patch of scrub, the first he had encountered since his camp of the night before. With a tightening of the lips, he urged the dogs forward and a few minutes later came to a halt in the shelter of the stunted growth.

The trail of the four continued on through, and, carbine in hand, Connie crept forward to the opposite edge. Throwing himself flat, he scanned the bowl-like depression before him. Almost in the exact centre of the mile-wide sweep of snow stood the cabin. And the boy's heart gave a bound as he noted that smoke curled from its chimney.

Old man Wurtz had planned well against surprise, for, as he studied the lay of the land, Connie saw that by no possible chance could any one approach the cabin by daylight unknown to its occupants. A long time he lay turning over in his mind scheme after scheme. The poisoning of his dogs had moved the boy as nothing had ever moved