He
swallowed his breakfast and picking up his rifle walked slowly into the
bush, his eyes on the ground. A mile away the lips twisted into their
sardonic grin as he noted where the fleeing man had floundered through
a muskeg, the flattened grass telling of his frequent falls. In a
balsam thicket he lifted a scrap of cloth from a protruding limb, and
again he smiled. Where Wentworth forded a waist-deep stream he had
lain down to rest on the sand of the opposite bank. The trail started
toward the south. By midforenoon Thumb noted with a grin that he was
traveling due east.
At noon he overtook Wentworth, mired to the middle in a marl bed,
supporting himself on a half sunken spruce.
Laying aside his rifle, the breed cut a pole with his belt ax and after
some difficulty succeeded in dragging the engineer to solid ground.
Wentworth was muttering and mumbling about a Russian sable coat, and
Thumb had to support him as he bound him to a spruce tree.
On the edge of the lake Corporal Downey picked up the trail. He
located the cached canoes, and returning to the fire, he reached down
and picked Wentworth's pipe from the gravel. "It's Thumb, all right,"
he said, as he stood holding the pipe. "I know his canoe. They were
both here at the same time. I don't savvy that, because Wentworth left
first. Thumb's trail is only three hours old. Maybe--if I hurry----"
From far to the southeastward came the sound of a shot.
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