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“Well!” The speaker’s face was convulsed, and Grant’s flamed with an answering anger. They glared at each other for a moment. “Don’t blame me. You fell for it, too.”

“I—-” Mort checked his rushing words.

“Yes, you! Now, what are you going to do about it? Welsh?”

“I’m going through to Nome.” The sight of his partner’s rage had set Mort to shaking with a furious desire to fly at his throat, but fortunately, he retained a spark of sanity.

“Then shut up, and quit chewing the rag. You–talk too much.”

Mort’s eyes were bloodshot; they fell upon the carbine under the sled lashings, and lingered there, then wavered. He opened his lips, reconsidered, spoke softly to the team, then lifted the heavy dog whip and smote the Malemutes with all his strength.

The men resumed their journey without further words, but each was cursing inwardly.

“So! I talk too much,” Grant thought. The accusation struck in his mind and he determined to speak no more.

“He blames me,” Cantwell reflected, bitterly. “I’m in wrong again and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. A fine partner, he is!”

All day they plodded on, neither trusting himself to speak. They ate their evening meal like mutes; they avoided each other’s eyes. Even the guide noticed the change and looked on curiously.

There were two robes and these the partners shared nightly, but their hatred had grown so during the past few hours that the thought of lying side by side, limb to limb, was distasteful.

Yet neither dared suggest a division of the bedding, for that would have brought further words and resulted in the crash which they longed for, but feared. They stripped off their furs, and lay down beside each other with the same repugnance they would have felt had there been a serpent in the couch.

This unending malevolent silence became terrible. The strain of it increased, for each man now had something definite to cherish in the words and the looks that had passed. They divided the camp work with scrupulous nicety, each man waited upon himself and asked no favors. The knowledge of his debt forever chafed Cantwell; Grant resented his companion’s lack of gratitude.

Of course they spoke occasionally–it was beyond human endurance to remain entirely dumb–but they conversed in monosyllables, about trivial things, and their voices were throaty, as if the effort choked them. Meanwhile they continued to glow inwardly at a white heat.

Cantwell no longer felt the desire merely to match his strength against Grant’s; the estrangement had become too wide for that; a physical victory would have been flat and tasteless; he craved some deeper satisfaction. He began to think of the ax–just how or when or why he never knew. It was a thin-bladed, polished thing of frosty steel, and the more he thought of it the stronger grew his impulse to rid himself once for all of that presence which exasperated him. It would be very easy, he reasoned; a sudden blow, with the weight of his shoulders behind it–he fancied he could feel the bit sink into Grant’s flesh, cleaving bone and cartilages in its course–a slanting downward stroke, aimed at the neck where it joined the body, and he would be forever satisfied. It would be ridiculously simple. He practiced in the gloom of evening as he felled spruce trees for firewood; he guarded the ax religiously; it became a living thing which urged him on to violence. He saw it standing by the tent fly when he closed his eyes to sleep; he dreamed of it; he sought it out with his eyes when he first awoke. He slid it loosely under the sled lashings every morning, thinking that its use could not long be delayed.

As for Grant, the carbine dwelt forever in his mind, and his fingers itched for it. He secretly slipped a cartridge into the chamber, and when an occasional ptarmigan offered itself for a target he saw the white spot on the breast of Johnny’s reindeer parka, dancing ahead of the Lyman bead.