PART I - - - CHAPTER I

CHAPTER I--THE TRAIL OF THE MEAT


Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees
had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and
they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading
light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a
desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit
of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter,
but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness--a laughter that was
mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and
partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and
incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and
the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted
Northland Wild.

But there _was_ life, abroad in the land and defiant. Down the frozen
waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur was rimed
with frost. Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths,
spouting forth in spumes of vapour that settled upon the hair of their
bodies and formed into crystals of frost. Leather harness was on the
dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged along
behind. The sled was without runners. It was made of stout birch-bark,
and its full surface rested on the snow. The front end of the sled was
turned up, like a scroll, in order to force down and under the bore of
soft snow that surged like a wave before it. On the sled, securely
lashed, was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things on the
sled--blankets, an axe, and a coffee-pot and frying-pan; but prominent,
occupying most of the space, was the long and narrow oblong box.

In advance of the dogs, on wide snowshoes, toiled a man. At the rear of
the sled toiled a second man. On the sled, in the box, lay a third man
whose toil was over,--a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down
until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the
Wild to like movement. Life is an offence to it, for life is movement;
and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water to
prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till
they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly
of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man--man who is the
most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all
movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.

But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable, toiled the two men who
were not yet dead. Their bodies were covered with fur and soft-tanned
leather. Eyelashes and cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals
from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible. This
gave them the seeming of ghostly masques, undertakers in a spectral world
at the funeral of some ghost. But under it all they were men,
penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny
adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the
might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of
space.

They travelled on without speech, saving their breath for the work of
their bodies. On every side was the silence, pressing upon them with a
tangible presence. It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of
deep water affect the body of the diver. It crushed them with the weight
of unending vastness and unalterable decree. It crushed them into the
remotest recesses of their own minds, pressing out of them, like juices
from the grape, all the false ardours and exaltations and undue
self-values of the human soul, until they perceived themselves finite and
small, specks and motes, moving with weak cunning and little wisdom
amidst the play and inter-play of the great blind elements and forces.

An hour went by, and a second hour. The pale light of the short sunless
day was beginning to fade, when a faint far cry arose on the still air.
It soared upward with a swift rush, till it reached its topmost note,
where it persisted, palpitant and tense, and then slowly died away. It
might have been a lost soul wailing, had it not been invested with a
certain sad fierceness and hungry eagerness. The front man turned his
head until his eyes met the eyes of the man behind. And then, across the
narrow oblong box, each nodded to the other.

A second cry arose, piercing the silence with needle-like shrillness.
Both men located the sound. It was to the rear, somewhere in the snow
expanse they had just traversed. A third and answering cry arose, also
to the rear and to the left of the second cry.

"They're after us, Bill," said the man at the front.

His voice sounded hoarse and unreal, and he had spoken with apparent
effort.

"Meat is scarce," answered his comrade. "I ain't seen a rabbit sign for
days."

Thereafter they spoke no more, though their ears were keen for the
hunting-cries that continued to rise behind them.

At the fall of darkness they swung the dogs into a cluster of spruce
trees on the edge of the waterway and made a camp. The coffin, at the
side of the fire, served for seat and table. The wolf-dogs, clustered on
the far side of the fire, snarled and bickered among themselves, but
evinced no inclination to stray off into the darkness.

"Seems to me, Henry, they're stayin' remarkable close to camp," Bill
commented.

Henry, squatting over the fire and settling the pot of coffee with a
piece of ice, nodded. Nor did he speak till he had taken his seat on the
coffin and begun to eat.

"They know where their hides is safe," he said. "They'd sooner eat grub
than be grub. They're pretty wise, them dogs."

Bill shook his head. "Oh, I don't know."

His comrade looked at him curiously. "First time I ever heard you say
anything about their not bein' wise."

"Henry," said the other, munching with deliberation the beans he was
eating, "did you happen to notice the way them dogs kicked up when I was
a-feedin' 'em?"

"They did cut up more'n usual," Henry acknowledged.

"How many dogs 've we got, Henry?"

"Six."

"Well, Henry . . . " Bill stopped for a moment, in order that his words
might gain greater significance. "As I was sayin', Henry, we've got six
dogs. I took six fish out of the bag. I gave one fish to each dog, an',
Henry, I was one fish short."

"You counted wrong."

"We've got six dogs," the other reiterated dispassionately. "I took out
six fish. One Ear didn't get no fish. I came back to the bag afterward
an' got 'm his fish."

"We've only got six dogs," Henry said.

"Henry," Bill went on. "I won't say they was all dogs, but there was
seven of 'm that got fish."

Henry stopped eating to glance across the fire and count the dogs.

"There's only six now," he said.

"I saw the other one run off across the snow," Bill announced with cool
positiveness. "I saw seven."

Henry looked at him commiseratingly, and said, "I'll be almighty glad
when this trip's over."

"What d'ye mean by that?" Bill demanded.

"I mean that this load of ourn is gettin' on your nerves, an' that you're
beginnin' to see things."

"I thought of that," Bill answered gravely. "An' so, when I saw it run
off across the snow, I looked in the snow an' saw its tracks. Then I
counted the dogs an' there was still six of 'em. The tracks is there in
the snow now. D'ye want to look at 'em? I'll show 'em to you."

Henry did not reply, but munched on in silence, until, the meal finished,
he topped it with a final cup of coffee. He wiped his mouth with the
back of his hand and said:

"Then you're thinkin' as it was--"

A long wailing cry, fiercely sad, from somewhere in the darkness, had
interrupted him. He stopped to listen to it, then he finished his
sentence with a wave of his hand toward the sound of the cry, "--one of
them?"

Bill nodded. "I'd a blame sight sooner think that than anything else.
You noticed yourself the row the dogs made."

Cry after cry, and answering cries, were turning the silence into a
bedlam. From every side the cries arose, and the dogs betrayed their
fear by huddling together and so close to the fire that their hair was
scorched by the heat. Bill threw on more wood, before lighting his pipe.

"I'm thinking you're down in the mouth some," Henry said.

"Henry . . . " He sucked meditatively at his pipe for some time before
he went on. "Henry, I was a-thinkin' what a blame sight luckier he is
than you an' me'll ever be."

He indicated the third person by a downward thrust of the thumb to the
box on which they sat.

"You an' me, Henry, when we die, we'll be lucky if we get enough stones
over our carcases to keep the dogs off of us."

"But we ain't got people an' money an' all the rest, like him," Henry
rejoined. "Long-distance funerals is somethin' you an' me can't exactly
afford."

"What gets me, Henry, is what a chap like this, that's a lord or
something in his own country, and that's never had to bother about grub
nor blankets; why he comes a-buttin' round the Godforsaken ends of the
earth--that's what I can't exactly see."

"He might have lived to a ripe old age if he'd stayed at home," Henry
agreed.

Bill opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. Instead, he
pointed towards the wall of darkness that pressed about them from every
side. There was no suggestion of form in the utter blackness; only could
be seen a pair of eyes gleaming like live coals. Henry indicated with
his head a second pair, and a third. A circle of the gleaming eyes had
drawn about their camp. Now and again a pair of eyes moved, or
disappeared to appear again a moment later.

The unrest of the dogs had been increasing, and they stampeded, in a
surge of sudden fear, to the near side of the fire, cringing and crawling
about the legs of the men. In the scramble one of the dogs had been
overturned on the edge of the fire, and it had yelped with pain and
fright as the smell of its singed coat possessed the air. The commotion
caused the circle of eyes to shift restlessly for a moment and even to
withdraw a bit, but it settled down again as the dogs became quiet.

"Henry, it's a blame misfortune to be out of ammunition."

Bill had finished his pipe and was helping his companion to spread the
bed of fur and blanket upon the spruce boughs which he had laid over the
snow before supper. Henry grunted, and began unlacing his mocassins.

"How many cartridges did you say you had left?" he asked.

"Three," came the answer. "An' I wisht 'twas three hundred. Then I'd
show 'em what for, damn 'em!"

He shook his fist angrily at the gleaming eyes, and began securely to
prop his moccasins before the fire.

"An' I wisht this cold snap'd break," he went on. "It's ben fifty below
for two weeks now. An' I wisht I'd never started on this trip, Henry. I
don't like the looks of it. I don't feel right, somehow. An' while I'm
wishin', I wisht the trip was over an' done with, an' you an' me
a-sittin' by the fire in Fort McGurry just about now an' playing
cribbage--that's what I wisht."

Henry grunted and crawled into bed. As he dozed off he was aroused by
his comrade's voice.

"Say, Henry, that other one that come in an' got a fish--why didn't the
dogs pitch into it? That's what's botherin' me."

"You're botherin' too much, Bill," came the sleepy response. "You was
never like this before. You jes' shut up now, an' go to sleep, an'
you'll be all hunkydory in the mornin'. Your stomach's sour, that's
what's botherin' you."

The men slept, breathing heavily, side by side, under the one covering.
The fire died down, and the gleaming eyes drew closer the circle they had
flung about the camp. The dogs clustered together in fear, now and again
snarling menacingly as a pair of eyes drew close. Once their uproar
became so loud that Bill woke up. He got out of bed carefully, so as not
to disturb the sleep of his comrade, and threw more wood on the fire. As
it began to flame up, the circle of eyes drew farther back. He glanced
casually at the huddling dogs. He rubbed his eyes and looked at them
more sharply. Then he crawled back into the blankets.

"Henry," he said. "Oh, Henry."

Henry groaned as he passed from sleep to waking, and demanded, "What's
wrong now?"

"Nothin'," came the answer; "only there's seven of 'em again. I just
counted."

Henry acknowledged receipt of the information with a grunt that slid into
a snore as he drifted back into sleep.

In the morning it was Henry who awoke first and routed his companion out
of bed. Daylight was yet three hours away, though it was already six
o'clock; and in the darkness Henry went about preparing breakfast, while
Bill rolled the blankets and made the sled ready for lashing.

"Say, Henry," he asked suddenly, "how many dogs did you say we had?"

"Six."

"Wrong," Bill proclaimed triumphantly.

"Seven again?" Henry queried.

"No, five; one's gone."

"The hell!" Henry cried in wrath, leaving the cooking to come and count
the dogs.

"You're right, Bill," he concluded. "Fatty's gone."

"An' he went like greased lightnin' once he got started. Couldn't 've
seen 'm for smoke."

"No chance at all," Henry concluded. "They jes' swallowed 'm alive. I
bet he was yelpin' as he went down their throats, damn 'em!"

"He always was a fool dog," said Bill.

"But no fool dog ought to be fool enough to go off an' commit suicide
that way." He looked over the remainder of the team with a speculative
eye that summed up instantly the salient traits of each animal. "I bet
none of the others would do it."

"Couldn't drive 'em away from the fire with a club," Bill agreed. "I
always did think there was somethin' wrong with Fatty anyway."

And this was the epitaph of a dead dog on the Northland trail--less scant
than the epitaph of many another dog, of many a man.

CHAPTER II--THE SHE-WOLF

CHAPTER II--THE SHE-WOLF


Breakfast eaten and the slim camp-outfit lashed to the sled, the men
turned their backs on the cheery fire and launched out into the darkness.
At once began to rise the cries that were fiercely sad--cries that called
through the darkness and cold to one another and answered back.
Conversation ceased. Daylight came at nine o'clock. At midday the sky
to the south warmed to rose-colour, and marked where the bulge of the
earth intervened between the meridian sun and the northern world. But
the rose-colour swiftly faded. The grey light of day that remained
lasted until three o'clock, when it, too, faded, and the pall of the
Arctic night descended upon the lone and silent land.

As darkness came on, the hunting-cries to right and left and rear drew
closer--so close that more than once they sent surges of fear through the
toiling dogs, throwing them into short-lived panics.

At the conclusion of one such panic, when he and Henry had got the dogs
back in the traces, Bill said:

"I wisht they'd strike game somewheres, an' go away an' leave us alone."

"They do get on the nerves horrible," Henry sympathised.

They spoke no more until camp was made.

Henry was bending over and adding ice to the babbling pot of beans when
he was startled by the sound of a blow, an exclamation from Bill, and a
sharp snarling cry of pain from among the dogs. He straightened up in
time to see a dim form disappearing across the snow into the shelter of
the dark. Then he saw Bill, standing amid the dogs, half triumphant,
half crestfallen, in one hand a stout club, in the other the tail and
part of the body of a sun-cured salmon.

"It got half of it," he announced; "but I got a whack at it jes' the
same. D'ye hear it squeal?"

"What'd it look like?" Henry asked.

"Couldn't see. But it had four legs an' a mouth an' hair an' looked like
any dog."

"Must be a tame wolf, I reckon."

"It's damned tame, whatever it is, comin' in here at feedin' time an'
gettin' its whack of fish."

That night, when supper was finished and they sat on the oblong box and
pulled at their pipes, the circle of gleaming eyes drew in even closer
than before.

"I wisht they'd spring up a bunch of moose or something, an' go away an'
leave us alone," Bill said.

Henry grunted with an intonation that was not all sympathy, and for a
quarter of an hour they sat on in silence, Henry staring at the fire, and
Bill at the circle of eyes that burned in the darkness just beyond the
firelight.

"I wisht we was pullin' into McGurry right now," he began again.

"Shut up your wishin' and your croakin'," Henry burst out angrily. "Your
stomach's sour. That's what's ailin' you. Swallow a spoonful of sody,
an' you'll sweeten up wonderful an' be more pleasant company."

In the morning Henry was aroused by fervid blasphemy that proceeded from
the mouth of Bill. Henry propped himself up on an elbow and looked to
see his comrade standing among the dogs beside the replenished fire, his
arms raised in objurgation, his face distorted with passion.

"Hello!" Henry called. "What's up now?"

"Frog's gone," came the answer.

"No."

"I tell you yes."

Henry leaped out of the blankets and to the dogs. He counted them with
care, and then joined his partner in cursing the power of the Wild that
had robbed them of another dog.

"Frog was the strongest dog of the bunch," Bill pronounced finally.

"An' he was no fool dog neither," Henry added.

And so was recorded the second epitaph in two days.

A gloomy breakfast was eaten, and the four remaining dogs were harnessed
to the sled. The day was a repetition of the days that had gone before.
The men toiled without speech across the face of the frozen world. The
silence was unbroken save by the cries of their pursuers, that, unseen,
hung upon their rear. With the coming of night in the mid-afternoon, the
cries sounded closer as the pursuers drew in according to their custom;
and the dogs grew excited and frightened, and were guilty of panics that
tangled the traces and further depressed the two men.

"There, that'll fix you fool critters," Bill said with satisfaction that
night, standing erect at completion of his task.

Henry left the cooking to come and see. Not only had his partner tied
the dogs up, but he had tied them, after the Indian fashion, with sticks.
About the neck of each dog he had fastened a leather thong. To this, and
so close to the neck that the dog could not get his teeth to it, he had
tied a stout stick four or five feet in length. The other end of the
stick, in turn, was made fast to a stake in the ground by means of a
leather thong. The dog was unable to gnaw through the leather at his own
end of the stick. The stick prevented him from getting at the leather
that fastened the other end.

Henry nodded his head approvingly.

"It's the only contraption that'll ever hold One Ear," he said. "He can
gnaw through leather as clean as a knife an' jes' about half as quick.
They all'll be here in the mornin' hunkydory."

"You jes' bet they will," Bill affirmed. "If one of em' turns up
missin', I'll go without my coffee."

"They jes' know we ain't loaded to kill," Henry remarked at bed-time,
indicating the gleaming circle that hemmed them in. "If we could put a
couple of shots into 'em, they'd be more respectful. They come closer
every night. Get the firelight out of your eyes an' look hard--there!
Did you see that one?"

For some time the two men amused themselves with watching the movement of
vague forms on the edge of the firelight. By looking closely and
steadily at where a pair of eyes burned in the darkness, the form of the
animal would slowly take shape. They could even see these forms move at
times.

A sound among the dogs attracted the men's attention. One Ear was
uttering quick, eager whines, lunging at the length of his stick toward
the darkness, and desisting now and again in order to make frantic
attacks on the stick with his teeth.

"Look at that, Bill," Henry whispered.

Full into the firelight, with a stealthy, sidelong movement, glided a
doglike animal. It moved with commingled mistrust and daring, cautiously
observing the men, its attention fixed on the dogs. One Ear strained the
full length of the stick toward the intruder and whined with eagerness.

"That fool One Ear don't seem scairt much," Bill said in a low tone.

"It's a she-wolf," Henry whispered back, "an' that accounts for Fatty an'
Frog. She's the decoy for the pack. She draws out the dog an' then all
the rest pitches in an' eats 'm up."

The fire crackled. A log fell apart with a loud spluttering noise. At
the sound of it the strange animal leaped back into the darkness.

"Henry, I'm a-thinkin'," Bill announced.

"Thinkin' what?"

"I'm a-thinkin' that was the one I lambasted with the club."

"Ain't the slightest doubt in the world," was Henry's response.

"An' right here I want to remark," Bill went on, "that that animal's
familyarity with campfires is suspicious an' immoral."

"It knows for certain more'n a self-respectin' wolf ought to know," Henry
agreed. "A wolf that knows enough to come in with the dogs at feedin'
time has had experiences."

"Ol' Villan had a dog once that run away with the wolves," Bill cogitates
aloud. "I ought to know. I shot it out of the pack in a moose pasture
over 'on Little Stick. An' Ol' Villan cried like a baby. Hadn't seen it
for three years, he said. Ben with the wolves all that time."

"I reckon you've called the turn, Bill. That wolf's a dog, an' it's
eaten fish many's the time from the hand of man."

"An if I get a chance at it, that wolf that's a dog'll be jes' meat,"
Bill declared. "We can't afford to lose no more animals."

"But you've only got three cartridges," Henry objected.

"I'll wait for a dead sure shot," was the reply.

In the morning Henry renewed the fire and cooked breakfast to the
accompaniment of his partner's snoring.

"You was sleepin' jes' too comfortable for anything," Henry told him, as
he routed him out for breakfast. "I hadn't the heart to rouse you."

Bill began to eat sleepily. He noticed that his cup was empty and
started to reach for the pot. But the pot was beyond arm's length and
beside Henry.

"Say, Henry," he chided gently, "ain't you forgot somethin'?"

Henry looked about with great carefulness and shook his head. Bill held
up the empty cup.

"You don't get no coffee," Henry announced.

"Ain't run out?" Bill asked anxiously.

"Nope."

"Ain't thinkin' it'll hurt my digestion?"

"Nope."

A flush of angry blood pervaded Bill's face.

"Then it's jes' warm an' anxious I am to be hearin' you explain
yourself," he said.

"Spanker's gone," Henry answered.

Without haste, with the air of one resigned to misfortune Bill turned his
head, and from where he sat counted the dogs.

"How'd it happen?" he asked apathetically.

Henry shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know. Unless One Ear gnawed 'm
loose. He couldn't a-done it himself, that's sure."

"The darned cuss." Bill spoke gravely and slowly, with no hint of the
anger that was raging within. "Jes' because he couldn't chew himself
loose, he chews Spanker loose."

"Well, Spanker's troubles is over anyway; I guess he's digested by this
time an' cavortin' over the landscape in the bellies of twenty different
wolves," was Henry's epitaph on this, the latest lost dog. "Have some
coffee, Bill."

But Bill shook his head.

"Go on," Henry pleaded, elevating the pot.

Bill shoved his cup aside. "I'll be ding-dong-danged if I do. I said I
wouldn't if ary dog turned up missin', an' I won't."

"It's darn good coffee," Henry said enticingly.

But Bill was stubborn, and he ate a dry breakfast washed down with
mumbled curses at One Ear for the trick he had played.

"I'll tie 'em up out of reach of each other to-night," Bill said, as they
took the trail.

They had travelled little more than a hundred yards, when Henry, who was
in front, bent down and picked up something with which his snowshoe had
collided. It was dark, and he could not see it, but he recognised it by
the touch. He flung it back, so that it struck the sled and bounced
along until it fetched up on Bill's snowshoes.

"Mebbe you'll need that in your business," Henry said.

Bill uttered an exclamation. It was all that was left of Spanker--the
stick with which he had been tied.

"They ate 'm hide an' all," Bill announced. "The stick's as clean as a
whistle. They've ate the leather offen both ends. They're damn hungry,
Henry, an' they'll have you an' me guessin' before this trip's over."

Henry laughed defiantly. "I ain't been trailed this way by wolves
before, but I've gone through a whole lot worse an' kept my health. Takes
more'n a handful of them pesky critters to do for yours truly, Bill, my
son."

"I don't know, I don't know," Bill muttered ominously.

"Well, you'll know all right when we pull into McGurry."

"I ain't feelin' special enthusiastic," Bill persisted.

"You're off colour, that's what's the matter with you," Henry dogmatised.
"What you need is quinine, an' I'm goin' to dose you up stiff as soon as
we make McGurry."

Bill grunted his disagreement with the diagnosis, and lapsed into
silence. The day was like all the days. Light came at nine o'clock. At
twelve o'clock the southern horizon was warmed by the unseen sun; and
then began the cold grey of afternoon that would merge, three hours
later, into night.

It was just after the sun's futile effort to appear, that Bill slipped
the rifle from under the sled-lashings and said:

"You keep right on, Henry, I'm goin' to see what I can see."

"You'd better stick by the sled," his partner protested. "You've only
got three cartridges, an' there's no tellin' what might happen."

"Who's croaking now?" Bill demanded triumphantly.

Henry made no reply, and plodded on alone, though often he cast anxious
glances back into the grey solitude where his partner had disappeared. An
hour later, taking advantage of the cut-offs around which the sled had to
go, Bill arrived.

"They're scattered an' rangin' along wide," he said: "keeping up with us
an' lookin' for game at the same time. You see, they're sure of us, only
they know they've got to wait to get us. In the meantime they're willin'
to pick up anything eatable that comes handy."

"You mean they _think_ they're sure of us," Henry objected pointedly.

But Bill ignored him. "I seen some of them. They're pretty thin. They
ain't had a bite in weeks I reckon, outside of Fatty an' Frog an'
Spanker; an' there's so many of 'em that that didn't go far. They're
remarkable thin. Their ribs is like wash-boards, an' their stomachs is
right up against their backbones. They're pretty desperate, I can tell
you. They'll be goin' mad, yet, an' then watch out."

A few minutes later, Henry, who was now travelling behind the sled,
emitted a low, warning whistle. Bill turned and looked, then quietly
stopped the dogs. To the rear, from around the last bend and plainly
into view, on the very trail they had just covered, trotted a furry,
slinking form. Its nose was to the trail, and it trotted with a
peculiar, sliding, effortless gait. When they halted, it halted,
throwing up its head and regarding them steadily with nostrils that
twitched as it caught and studied the scent of them.

"It's the she-wolf," Bill answered.

The dogs had lain down in the snow, and he walked past them to join his
partner in the sled. Together they watched the strange animal that had
pursued them for days and that had already accomplished the destruction
of half their dog-team.

After a searching scrutiny, the animal trotted forward a few steps. This
it repeated several times, till it was a short hundred yards away. It
paused, head up, close by a clump of spruce trees, and with sight and
scent studied the outfit of the watching men. It looked at them in a
strangely wistful way, after the manner of a dog; but in its wistfulness
there was none of the dog affection. It was a wistfulness bred of
hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, as merciless as the frost itself.

It was large for a wolf, its gaunt frame advertising the lines of an
animal that was among the largest of its kind.

"Stands pretty close to two feet an' a half at the shoulders," Henry
commented. "An' I'll bet it ain't far from five feet long."

"Kind of strange colour for a wolf," was Bill's criticism. "I never seen
a red wolf before. Looks almost cinnamon to me."

The animal was certainly not cinnamon-coloured. Its coat was the true
wolf-coat. The dominant colour was grey, and yet there was to it a faint
reddish hue--a hue that was baffling, that appeared and disappeared, that
was more like an illusion of the vision, now grey, distinctly grey, and
again giving hints and glints of a vague redness of colour not
classifiable in terms of ordinary experience.

"Looks for all the world like a big husky sled-dog," Bill said. "I
wouldn't be s'prised to see it wag its tail."

"Hello, you husky!" he called. "Come here, you whatever-your-name-is."

"Ain't a bit scairt of you," Henry laughed.

Bill waved his hand at it threateningly and shouted loudly; but the
animal betrayed no fear. The only change in it that they could notice
was an accession of alertness. It still regarded them with the merciless
wistfulness of hunger. They were meat, and it was hungry; and it would
like to go in and eat them if it dared.

"Look here, Henry," Bill said, unconsciously lowering his voice to a
whisper because of what he imitated. "We've got three cartridges. But
it's a dead shot. Couldn't miss it. It's got away with three of our
dogs, an' we oughter put a stop to it. What d'ye say?"

Henry nodded his consent. Bill cautiously slipped the gun from under the
sled-lashing. The gun was on the way to his shoulder, but it never got
there. For in that instant the she-wolf leaped sidewise from the trail
into the clump of spruce trees and disappeared.

The two men looked at each other. Henry whistled long and
comprehendingly.

"I might have knowed it," Bill chided himself aloud as he replaced the
gun. "Of course a wolf that knows enough to come in with the dogs at
feedin' time, 'd know all about shooting-irons. I tell you right now,
Henry, that critter's the cause of all our trouble. We'd have six dogs
at the present time, 'stead of three, if it wasn't for her. An' I tell
you right now, Henry, I'm goin' to get her. She's too smart to be shot
in the open. But I'm goin' to lay for her. I'll bushwhack her as sure
as my name is Bill."

"You needn't stray off too far in doin' it," his partner admonished. "If
that pack ever starts to jump you, them three cartridges'd be wuth no
more'n three whoops in hell. Them animals is damn hungry, an' once they
start in, they'll sure get you, Bill."

They camped early that night. Three dogs could not drag the sled so fast
nor for so long hours as could six, and they were showing unmistakable
signs of playing out. And the men went early to bed, Bill first seeing
to it that the dogs were tied out of gnawing-reach of one another.

But the wolves were growing bolder, and the men were aroused more than
once from their sleep. So near did the wolves approach, that the dogs
became frantic with terror, and it was necessary to replenish the fire
from time to time in order to keep the adventurous marauders at safer
distance.

"I've hearn sailors talk of sharks followin' a ship," Bill remarked, as
he crawled back into the blankets after one such replenishing of the
fire. "Well, them wolves is land sharks. They know their business
better'n we do, an' they ain't a-holdin' our trail this way for their
health. They're goin' to get us. They're sure goin' to get us, Henry."

"They've half got you a'ready, a-talkin' like that," Henry retorted
sharply. "A man's half licked when he says he is. An' you're half eaten
from the way you're goin' on about it."

"They've got away with better men than you an' me," Bill answered.

"Oh, shet up your croakin'. You make me all-fired tired."

Henry rolled over angrily on his side, but was surprised that Bill made
no similar display of temper. This was not Bill's way, for he was easily
angered by sharp words. Henry thought long over it before he went to
sleep, and as his eyelids fluttered down and he dozed off, the thought in
his mind was: "There's no mistakin' it, Bill's almighty blue. I'll have
to cheer him up to-morrow."