"Perhaps better than the Commissioner," replied Thornton. "It might
depend--on what your business is."
To them, as each stood for a moment in silence, there came the low
wailing of a dog out in the night.
"They are calling for Kazan," said Jan quietly, as though he had not
read the question in Thornton's last words. "Good night, m'sieur!"
The dogs were sitting upon their haunches, waiting, when Jan and Kazan
went back to them. Jan drew them farther back, where the thick spruce
shut them out from the clearing, and built a fire. Over this he hung
his coffee-pail and a big chunk of frozen caribou meat, and tossed
frozen fish to the hungry dogs. Then he pulled down spruce boughs and
spread his heavy blankets out near the fire, and waited for the coffee
and meat to cook. The huskies were through when he began eating, and
they lay on their bellies, close about his feet, ready to snap at the
scraps which he threw them. Jan noticed, as he ate, that there was
left in them none of the old, fierce, fighting spirit. They did not
snap or snarl. There was no quarreling when he threw bits of meat to
them, and he found himself wondering if they, too, were filled with
the sickness which was eating at his own heart.
With this sickness, this deathly feeling of loneliness and heartache,
there had entered into Jan now a strange sensation that was almost
excitement--an eagerness to fasten the dogs in their traces, to hurry
on, in spite of his exhaustion, to that place which Thornton had told
him of--Prince Albert, and to free himself there, for all time, of the
thing which had oppressed him since that night many years ago, when he
had staggered into Lac Bain to play his violin as Cummins' wife died.
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