They camped for their fourth night under an outcrop of rock. Garry was very silent. He slept restlessly, and once or twice groaned in his sleep. Clouds rolled up from the south, covered the moon and the great arching stars, and the temperature rose immediately. But the North had struck at them.
They started in a soft, grey twilight, under those merciful low clouds, for the fifth day of Garry’s fight. Kob was cheerful again with the rising temperature, sat up among his furs, and talked of Fort Scarlett, and how nice it would be to lie up in hospital.
“You does your best for me, Garry, and you’re as white to me as a feller could be, but there’s lots you can’t do, stands to reason. Not but what you always does your best.”
“Yes,” said Garry, slowly, “I does my best for you.”
“I know it, Garry. But there’s lots you can’t do. You’re tired, Garry?”
Kob glanced at the great fur-clad limbs, tireless as machinery; at the great shoulders bent to the yoke. A certain uneasiness stirred in him.
Suddenly, with a great, slow sigh, Garry stopped. He stood, arms folded on the yoke, head turned to the south, still as a rock.
“Kob, there should be a hill to the west, not a mile away—a hill breaking out o’ the level like a cliff. Look and tell me if it’s there.”
As his voice ceased, the terrible silence closed in on them like iron, so that all the senses ached to its grip.
“Garry! . . . . My God! . . . . You don’t mean—”
“I’m a’most blind, Kob. It’s the sun and the new snow. I can make shift to see my feet—in a kind of red mist. No more. Is the hill there, Kob?”
The silence took them again, broken now by Kob, who screamed out like a woman.
“Oh God, oh God, we’re done! You blind, and me sick! We’ll die here. You’ll never get me to Fort Scarlett! Oh, why didn’t I stay at the shack, and die there?”
When he had done, Garry spoke, gently, almost gaily. Kob could not see the grey granite of his face.
“I passed you my word I’d get you to Fort Scarlett, Kob. You ain’t found me break my word yet. I’ll get you there. I ain’t quite blind. No more’n a horse in blinkers. You’ll have to be driver, Kob, and tell me where to go.”
To all Kob’s cries and curses, to all the wild utterances of a sick man’s despair, he answered the same thing: