Page:Lost with Lieutenant Pike (1919).djvu/223

 *ened from a dream, and couldn't yet separate the real from the maybe not.

"We'd best be going on," Terry Miller warned. "We're to ketch the cap'n before night, and we're short of grub."

So the sledges proceeded by the river trail, while Stub lay and pondered. By the pain now and then in his head, when the sledge jolted, he had struck his scar; but somehow he had a wonderful feeling of relief, there. He was a new boy.

The trail continued as rough as ever. Most of the way the two men, John and Terry, had to pull for all they were worth; either tugging to get their sledges around open water by route of the narrow strips of shore, or else slipping and scurrying upon the snowy ice itself. Steep slopes and high cliffs shut the trail in, as before. The gaps on right and left were icy ravines and canyons that looked to be impassible.

The main party were not sighted, nor any trace of them. Toward dusk, which gathered early, Terry, ahead, halted.

"It beats the Dutch where the cap'n went to," he complained. "He got out, and he hasn't managed to get back in, I reckon. Now, what to do?"

"Only thing to do is to camp an' wait till mornin'," answered Freegift. "An' a powerful lone