He had given his
promise, and he was keeping it; for, if it wasn't really Breault's voice
up there in the wind, multiplied a thousand times, it was a good
imitation of it. Again Corporal Blake laughed--a laugh as unpleasant as
the cough that had come from Breault's bullet-punctured lung. He fell
asleep after a time; but even sleep could not drive from him the clinging
obsession of the thought that strange things were to happen in this
taking of Jan Thoreau.
With the gray dawn there was nothing to mark the passing of the storm
except freshly fallen snow, and Blake was on the trail before it was
light enough to see a hundred yards ahead. There was a defiance and a
contempt of last night in the crack of his long caribou-gut whip and the
halloo of his voice as he urged on his dogs. Breault's voice in the wind?
Bah! Only a fool would have thought that. Therefore he was a fool. And
Jan Thoreau--it would be like taking a child. There would be no
happenings to report--merely an arrest, a quick return journey, an affair
altogether too ordinary to be interesting. Perhaps it was all on account
of the hearty supper of caribou liver he had eaten. He was fond of liver,
and once or twice before it had played him tricks.
He began to wonder if he would find Jan Thoreau at home. He remembered
Jan quite vividly. The Indians called him Kitoochikun because he played a
fiddle. Blake, the Iron Man, disliked him because of that fiddle.
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