Then he followed.
He forgot that he was leaving his knife in the snow, forgot that back
there about the fire there were other dogs and other men. He only knew
that once before he had seen a sledge slip off into the wilderness;
that its going had left him a life of hatred and bitterness and desire
for vengeance; and that this was the same man who was slipping away
from him in the same way again.
He followed, sickened by the blow, but gaining strength as he pursued.
Ahead of him he could hear the sound of the toboggan and the cautious
lashing of a whip over the backs of the tired huskies. The sounds
filled him with fierce strength. He wiped away the warm trickle of
blood that ran over his cheek, and began to run, slowly at first,
swinging in the easy wolf-lope of the forest runner, with his elbows
close to his sides.
At that pace he could have followed for hours, losing when the pack
took a spurt, gaining when they lagged, an insistent Nemesis just
behind when the weighted dogs lay down in their traces. But there was
neither the coolness of Mukee nor the cleverness of Jean de Gravois in
the manner of Jan's running. When he heard the cracking of the whip
growing fainter, he dropped his arms straight to his sides and ran
more swiftly, his brain reeling with the madness of his desire to
reach the sledge--to drag from it the man who had struck him, to choke
life from the face that haunted that mental picture of his, grinning
at him and gloating always from the shadow world, just beyond the
pale, sweet loveliness of the woman who lived in it.
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