"They look like the pines on the ridge did the day the blizzard struck us down on the Assiniboia Creek," he said. "It was a full-powered one. The boys who'd camped ahead of us were frozen stiff by morning. The two we scraped the snow off were sitting there like statues, and we didn't worry 'bout the others. There was ten feet over them, anyway. I've no use for this kind of weather."
One of his companions swept his glance astern toward the smear of smoke on the serrated skyline, which was blotted out next moment when the _Adelaide_ swung her stern aloft.
"If you're right in your figuring, I'm glad I came along in this boat," he said. "Anyway, she's bigger, though I 'most took my berth in the _Shasta_. Seems to me we're quite a long while getting away from her."
The others agreed with him, for they had seen that smear of smoke on the skyline since early morning. Then they turned to watch the engineer, who came out of a door close by, and glanced up to weather, blinking in the bitter wind. He was a big loosely-built man in dungarees, with the pallid face of one accustomed to the half-light and heat of the engine-room, but in his case it was also unhealthily puffy. Then he slouched right aft, and stood still again looking down at the dial of the taffrail log which records the distance run, while he fumbled in a curious aimless fashion with the blackened rag in his hand.
"That," said one of the miners, "is a man I'm no way stuck on. Now, you'll most times find hard grit in an engineer, but this one kind of strikes me as feeling that there was something after him he was scared of."
"Well," said one of the others reflectively, "it's not an uncommon thing. There was a man down on the flat where we struck it who had a kind of notion that there were three big timber wolves on his trail. Kept his rifle clean with the magazine ram full for them, but one night they got him. A sure thing. Tom was there."
The man at whom he glanced nodded. "Now and then I wish I hadn't been," he said. "Lister was sitting very sick beside his fire that night. Said he heard those wolves pattering in the bush--there were thick pines all round us--'most made me think I did."
The miner made a little expressive grimace. "Longest night I ever put in. Sat there and kept them off him. Anyway, I tried, but he was dead at sun-up."