ble now, and warm. Eh? You are no longer
afraid?"

He sat down beside his daughter, and gently pulled back the soft fur
that enveloped the bundle she held in her arms. He could see one pink
cheek of baby Joan. The eyes of Joan, the mother, were like stars.

"It was the baby who saved us," she whispered. "The dogs were being torn
to pieces by the wolves, and I saw them leaping upon you, when one of
them sprang to the sledge. At first I thought it was one of the dogs.
But it was a wolf. He tore once at us, and the bearskin saved us. He was
almost at my throat when baby cried, and then he stood there, his red
eyes a foot from us, and I could have sworn again that he was a dog. In
an instant he turned, and was fighting the wolves. I saw him leap upon
one that was almost at your throat."

"He _was_ a dog," said old Pierre, holding out his hands to the warmth.
"They often wander away from the posts, and join the wolves. I have had
dogs do that. _Ma cheri_, a dog is a dog all his life. Kicks, abuse,
even the wolves can not change him--for long. He was one of the pack. He
came with them--to kill. But when he found _us_--"

"He fought for us," breathed the girl. She gave him the bundle, and
stood up, straight and tall and slim in the firelight. "He fought for
us--and he was terribly hurt," she said. "I saw him drag himself away.
Father, if he is out there--dying--"

Pierre Radisson stood up. He coughed in a shuddering way, trying to
stifle the sound under his beard. The fleck of crimson that came to his
lips with the cough Joan did not see. She had seen nothing of it during
the six days they had been traveling up from the edge of civilization.
Because of that cough, and the stain that came with it, Pierre had made
more than ordinary haste.

"I have been thinking of that," he said. "He was badly hurt, and I do
not think he went far. Here--take little Joan and sit close to the fire
until I come back."

The moon and the stars were brilliant in the sky when he went out in the
plain. A short distance from the edge of the timber-line he stood for a
moment upon the spot where the wolves had overtaken them an hour before.
Not one of his four dogs had lived. The snow was red with their blood,
and their bodies lay stiff where they had fallen under the pack. Pierre
shuddered as he looked at them. If the wolves had not turned their first
mad attack upon the dogs, what would have become of himself, Joan and
the baby? He turned away,