Conniston's spirit had become a living part of it, and the
foxes might yap everlastingly, and the winds howl, and winter follow
winter, and long night follow long night--and it would stand there in
its pride fighting to the last, a memorial to Derwent Conniston, the
Englishman.
Looking back at it, Keith bared his head in the raw dawn. "God bless
you, Conniston," he whispered, and turned slowly away and into the
south.
Ahead of him was eight hundred miles of wilderness--eight hundred miles
between him and the little town on the Saskatchewan where McDowell
commanded Division of the Royal Mounted. The thought of distance did
not appall him. Four years at the top of the earth had accustomed him
to the illimitable and had inured him to the lack of things. That
winter Conniston had followed him with the tenacity of a ferret for a
thousand miles along the rim of the Arctic, and it had been a miracle
that he had not killed the Englishman. A score of times he might have
ended the exciting chase without staining his own hands. His Eskimo
friends would have performed the deed at a word. But he had let the
Englishman live, and Conniston, dead, was sending him back home. Eight
hundred miles was but the step between.
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