That night Baree came into camp while they were
sleeping, and in the morning they found where he had burrowed his round
bed in the snow not a dozen yards from their shelter. The third morning
David shot his moose. And that night he lured Baree almost to the side
of their campfire, and tossed him chunks of raw flesh from where he sat
smoking his pipe.
He was changed. Three days on the trail and three nights in camp under
the stars had begun their promised miracle-working. His face was
darkened by a stubble of beard, his ears and cheek bones were reddened
by exposure to cold and wind; he felt that in those three days and
nights his muscles had hardened, and his weakness had left him. "It was
in your mind--your sickness," Father Roland had told him, and he
believed it now. He began to find a pleasure in that physical
achievement which he had wondered at in Mukoki and the Missioner. Each
noon when they stopped to boil their tea and cook their dinner, and each
night when they made camp, he had chopped down a tree. To-night it had
been an 8-inch jack pine, tough with pitch. The exertion had sent his
blood pounding through him furiously. He was still breathing deeply as
he sat near the fire, tossing bits of meat out to Baree.
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