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“There was no death that night in Holy Cross, though God knows one naked soul was due to walk out onto the snow. At daylight, when I came back for him, he had fled down the river with the fastest dogs, and to this day I’ve never seen his face, though ’tis often I’ve felt his hate.

“He’s grown into the strongest missionary on the coast, and he never lets a chance go by to harry me or the girl.

“D’ye mind the time ‘Skagway’ Bennet died? We was pardners up Norton Sound way when he was killed. They thought he suicided, but I know. I found a cariboo belt in the brush near camp–the kind they make on the Kuskokwim, Father Orion’s country. His men took the wrong one, that’s all.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell ye this, Cap, before we started, for now we’re into the South Country, where he owns the natives. He knows we’ve come, as the blood-token of the guide showed. He wants my life, and there’s great trouble comin’ up. I’m hopin’ ye’ll soon get your sight, for by now there’s a runner twenty miles into the hills with news that we’re blind in the church at Togiak. Three days he’ll be goin’, and on the fifth ye’ll hear the jangle of Russian dog-bells. He’ll kill the fastest team in Nushagak in the comin’, and God help us if we’re here.”

George scraped a bit of frost-lace from the lone window pane. Dark figures moved over the snow, circling the chapel, and he knew that each was armed. Only their reverence for the church held them from doing the task set by Orloff, and he sighed as he changed the bandages on his suffering mate.

They awoke the next morning to the moan of wind and the sift of snow clouds past their walls. Staring through his peep-hole, George distinguished only a seethe of whirling flakes that greyed the view, blotting even the neighbouring huts, and when the early evening brought a rising note in the storm the trouble lifted from his face.

“A three-day blizzard,” he rejoiced, “and the strongest team on the coast can’t wallow through it under a week. These on-shore gales is beauts.”

For three days the wind tore from off the sea into the open bight at whose head lay Togiak, and its violence wrecked the armour of shore ice in the bay till it beat and roared against the spit, a threshing maelstrom of shattered bergs. The waters piled into the inlet driven by the lash of the storm till they overflowed the river ice behind the village, submerging and breaking it into ragged, dangerous confusion.

On the third day, with Arctic vagary, the wind gasped reluctantly and scurried over the range. In its wake the surging ocean churned loudly and the back-water behind the town, held by the dam of freezing slush-ice at the river mouth, was skimmed by a thin ice-paper, pierced here and there by the up-ended piles from beneath. This held the night’s snow, so that morning showed the village girt on three sides by a stream soft-carpeted and safe to the eye, but failing beneath the feet of a child.

“You’re eyes are comin’ along mighty slow,” worried George. “I’m hopin’ his reverence is up to his gills in drifts back yonder. “We must leave him a sled trail for a souvenir.”

“How can we, with the place guarded?”

“Hitch the dogs and run for it by night, He’ll burn us out when he comes. Fine targets we’d make on the snow by the light of a burning shack. If ye can see to shoot we’ll go tonight. Hello! What’s that?”

Outside came the howl of malamoots and the cry of men. Leaping to the window, George rubbed it free and stared into the sunshine.