Pelletier must have
been like this--in those terrible days when he scribbled the
random thoughts of a half-mad man on his cabin door.
Bram was not yet mad. And yet he was fighting the thing that had
killed Pelletier. Loneliness. The fate forced upon him by the law
because he had killed a man.
His face was again heavy and unemotional when with a gesture he
made Philip understand that he was to ride on the sledge. Bram
himself went to the head of the pack. At the sharp clack of his
Eskimo the wolves strained in their traces. Another moment and
they were off, with Bram in the lead.
Philip was amazed at the pace set by the master of the pack. With
head and shoulders hunched low he set off in huge swinging strides
that kept the team on a steady trot behind him. They must have
traveled eight miles an hour. For a few minutes Philip could not
keep his eyes from Bram and the gray backs of the wolves. They
fascinated him, and at the same time the sight of them--straining
on ahead of him into a voiceless and empty world--filled him with
a strange and overwhelming compassion.
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