Yet he knew Corporal Cassidy was the deadliest menace the earth held for him, a menace that had followed him like a shadow through months and years--across the Barren Lands, along the rim of the Arctic, down the Mackenzie, and back again--a menace that never tired, and was never far behind in that ten thousand miles of wilderness they had covered.
Together in the bloodstirring game of One against One they had faced the deadliest perils of the northland.

They had gone hungry, and cold, and more than once a thousand miles of nothingness lay behind them, and death seemed preferable to anything that might lie ahead.

Yet in that aloneness, when companionship was more precious than anything else on earth, neither had cried quits.

The game had gone on, Cassidy after his man--and Jolly Roger McKay fighting for his freedom.
As he headed his canoe north and east, Jolly Roger thought again of the wager made weeks ago down at Cragg's Ridge, when he had turned the tables on Cassidy and when Cassidy had made a solemn oath to resign from the service if he failed to get his man in their next encounter.

He knew Cassidy would keep his word, and something told him that tonight the last act in this tragedy of two had begun.