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