amongst the underbrush and the scattered clumps of
spruce, could be seen One Ear. Henry judged his case to be hopeless. The
dog was thoroughly alive to its danger, but it was running on the outer
circle while the wolf-pack was running on the inner and shorter circle.
It was vain to think of One Ear so outdistancing his pursuers as to be
able to cut across their circle in advance of them and to regain the
sled.

The different lines were rapidly approaching a point. Somewhere out
there in the snow, screened from his sight by trees and thickets, Henry
knew that the wolf-pack, One Ear, and Bill were coming together. All too
quickly, far more quickly than he had expected, it happened. He heard a
shot, then two shots, in rapid succession, and he knew that Bill's
ammunition was gone. Then he heard a great outcry of snarls and yelps.
He recognised One Ear's yell of pain and terror, and he heard a wolf-cry
that bespoke a stricken animal. And that was all. The snarls ceased.
The yelping died away. Silence settled down again over the lonely land.

He sat for a long while upon the sled. There was no need for him to go
and see what had happened. He knew it as though it had taken place
before his eyes. Once, he roused with a start and hastily got the axe
out from underneath the lashings. But for some time longer he sat and
brooded, the two remaining dogs crouching and trembling at his feet.

At last he arose in a weary manner, as though all the resilience had gone
out of his body, and proceeded to fasten the dogs to the sled. He passed
a rope over his shoulder, a man-trace, and pulled with the dogs. He did
not go far. At the first hint of darkness he hastened to make a camp,
and he saw to it that he had a generous supply of firewood. He fed the
dogs, cooked and ate his supper, and made his bed close to the fire.

But he was not destined to enjoy that bed. Before his eyes closed the
wolves had drawn too near for safety. It no longer required an effort of
the vision to see them. They were all about him and the fire, in a
narrow circle, and he could see them plainly in the firelight lying down,
sitting up, crawling forward on their bellies, or slinking back and
forth. They even slept. Here and there he could see one curled up in
the snow like a dog, taking the sleep that was now denied himself.

He kept the fire brightly blazing, for he knew that it alone intervened
between the flesh of his body and their hungry