Would the dogs beat him out? Sloughing in the trail, bleeding at every
foot, would they still drag their burden beyond the reach of his
vengeance? The fear fastened itself upon him, urging him to greater
effort, and he called upon the last of his strength in a spurt that
carried him to where the thick spruce gave place to thin bush, and the
bush to the barren and rocky side of a huge ridge, up which the trail
climbed strong and well defined. For a few paces he followed it, then
slipped and rolled back as the fatal paralysis deadened all power of
movement in his limbs. He lay where he fell, moaning out his grief
with his wide-staring eyes turned straight up into the cold gray of
the starless sky.
For a long time he was motionless. From the top of the ridge, where
the trail cut over the mountain, he looked like a bit of fire-
blackened wood half buried in the snow. Half-way up the ridge a wolf,
slinking hungrily, sniffed first up the trail and then down, and broke
the stillness of the gray night-end with a mournful howl. It did not
stir Jan Thoreau.
Long after the wolf had passed on, he moved a little, twisting himself
so that his eyes could follow the tracks made by the sledge and dogs.
When he came to where the snow-covered backbone of the ridge cut
itself in faint outline against the desolate coldness of the sky,
there fell from him the first sound of returning life.
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