He nodded and looked round him in expectant fashion.
"Must have a shack or a tent round about. He's got no pack of any kind. If it was a tent, likely enough it's a hundred miles away by now. If it was a shack it'll be very useful--to us."
She prayed it might be the latter. Anything was better than this mad wandering.
They found the shack ten minutes later, nestling in a hollow, with its chimney still smoking. They pulled up outside and went to investigate the home of the unfortunate stranger. It was a comfortable affair, containing two rooms and a small outhouse, plus a certain amount of rough furniture. In the corner of the outer room was the ubiquitous Yukon stove, with a fryingpan on the top containing a much overdone "flapjack." A pair of snow-shoes lay in a corner, and sundry articles of clothing were hanging on nails. In the next room was a camp-bed and more clothes, two bags of flour, one of beans, a few tins of canned meat, a rifle and a hundred cartridges--but no letters or information of any kind respecting its late owner.
"It'll do," said Jim. "It'll be better than a tent, anyway."
Angela agreed reluctantly. Somehow it seemed heartless to coolly take possession of this place, with its late owner lying dead but a bare mile away. It gave her an uncanny sensation as she glanced at all the little things that belonged to him, that his cold hands had touched but a few hours ago. She reflected that a year ago such an incident as this would have chilled her with horror. But apart from arousing a small amount of sentimentality it affected her now very little. It came as a shock to her to realize that fact--she was becoming as wild as this "cowpuncher" husband of hers, who even now was sallying forth with spade and ax to excavate a shallow grave in the frozen earth, to save a man's body from prowling wolves. And all without an atom of sentiment!
So little did she know of him! She did not see him remove his cap as he gently placed the luckless man in his last resting-place, or hear the short whispered prayer that he uttered.
The dogs were unharnessed and driven into the outhouse which was to serve as their future domicile. Jim collected the dead man's belongings together and made a neat pile of them in one corner of the outer room. Angela's personal things were taken into the more comfortable inner room, which boasted of a match-boarded wall--not to mention half a dozen rather indelicate prints tacked on to the same.