"And it never leaves your back, Croisset.

If the gun should go off accidentally it would bore a hole clean through you." Half an hour later the Frenchman halted where the banskians climbed the side of a sloping ridge.
"If you could trust me I would ask to go on ahead," whispered Jean.
"This ridge shuts in the plain, M'seur, and just over the top of it is an old cabin which has been abandoned for many years.

There is not one chance in a thousand of there being any one there, though it is a good fox ridge at this season.

From it you may see the light in Meleese's window at night." He did not stop to watch the effect of his last words, but began picking his way up the ridge with the dogs tugging at his heels.

At the top he swung sharply between two huge masses of snow-covered rock, and in the lee of the largest of these, almost entirely sheltered from the drifts piled up by easterly winds, they came suddenly on a small log hut.