"Hardened!" Yorke laughed grimly. "You should have seen him up in the
Yukon! The man's been handling these rotten morgue cases 'till he'd
qualify for the Seine River Police. He's got so he ascribes well-nigh
everything now to 'dhrink an' th' divil.'" His face softened, "but I
know the real heart of old Burke under it all."

About two miles down the trail Redmond halted.

"Here it is!" he said. And he indicated an irregular, blood-soaked,
clawed-up patch in the snow where the sanguinary swath ended. They
dismounted. Slavin drawing up alongside the coroner's cutter handed over
his lines to the teamster.

"Now!" said he, "let's shtart in! . . . Ye must have 'shpotted this on
yeh way up, Docthor?" He pointed to the patch.

The latter nodded. "Yes! we thought it must have happened here."

For some few seconds, with one accord the party stared about them at
their surroundings. The frozen landscape at this point presented a
singularly lonely, desolate aspect. Flat, and for the greater part
absolutely bare of brush; save where from a small coulee some half mile
to the left of the trail the tops of a cotton-wood clump were visible.
Far to the right-hand, more than a mile away, stretched the first of the
shelving benches, where the high ground sloped away in irregular jumps,
as it were, to the river.

"Best ye shtay fwhere ye all are," cautioned the sergeant, "'till I size
up th' lay av things a bit. I du not want th' thracks fouled up. H-mm!
let's see now!" He remained in deep, thoughtful silence a space.