Page:Toilers of the Trails.djvu/98

 So it fell out that one January day a dog-team with a man ahead breaking trail and another reeling at the gee-pole of the sled was floundering into the drive of the blizzard that had howled south upon the Height-of-Land country from ice-bound James Bay. For two days, in the teeth of it, the team had labored up the great wilderness lake, now losing the hardened trail underneath and circling in the snow until they found it; then plunging on until the weary trail-breaker and the lead-dog, blinded by the white scourge that beat their faces like a hail of shot, lost the trail again. Then would follow the circling in the soft snow—work that wrung the last ounce of strength from the spent dogs—until the team was again on hard footing.

So for two days they had struggled, facing the pitiless norther. Somewhere at the foot of the great ice-bound lake they knew there was shelter and food and fire. Somewhere, but how many white miles away? Before the new snow had wiped out the trails, Cree trappers had told them that Flying Post lay at the other end of the great lake two sleeps to the west. In two sleeps they had found the lake, but there they met the blizzard. And now the last whitefish had been fed the huskies and the pemmican and tea-bags were empty.

When the tired dogs finally lay down in their traces and refused to go on against the drive of the gale, the exhausted men took counsel.

"We'd better go ashore and make camp while there's light, John," gasped the younger man as the