s comrades that he seemed to be as well
as ever, except that his arm and side were very sore.

Walking slowly, that Rod might "find himself," as Wabi expressed it, the
two went up the river. It was a dull gray morning and occasionally large
flakes of snow fell, giving evidence that before the day was far
advanced another storm would set in. Mukoki's traps were not more than
an eighth of a mile from camp, and as the two rounded a certain bend in
the river the old hunter suddenly stopped with a huge grant of
satisfaction. Following the direction in which he pointed Rod saw a dark
object lying in the snow a short distance away.

"That's heem!" exclaimed the Indian.

As they approached, the object became animate, pulling and tearing in
the snow as though in the agonies of death. A few moments more and they
were close up to the captive.

"She wolf!" explained Mukoki.

He gripped the ax he had brought with him and approached within a few
feet of the crouching animal. Rod could see that one of the big steel
traps had caught the wolf on the forward leg and that the other had
buried its teeth in one of the hind legs. Thus held the doomed animal
could make little effort to protect itself and crouched in sullen quiet,
its white fangs gleaming in a noiseless, defiant snarl, its eyes shining
with pain and anger, and with only its thin starved body, which jerked
and trembled as the Indian came nearer, betraying signs of fear. To Rod
it might have been a pitiful sight had not there come to him a thought
of the preceding night and of his own and Wabi's narrow escape from the
pack.

Two or three quick blows of the ax and the wolf was dead. With a skill
which can only be found among those of his own race, Mukoki drew his
knife, cut deftly around the wolf's head just below the ears, and with
one downward, one upward, and two sidewise jerks tore off the scalp.

Suddenly, without giving a thought to his speech, there shot from Rod,

"Is that the way you scalp people?"

Mukoki looked up, his jaw fell--and then he gave the nearest thing to a
real laugh that Rod ever heard come from between his lips. When Mukoki
laughed it was usually in a half-chuckle, a half-gurgle--something that
neither Rod nor Wabi could have imitated if they had tried steadily for
a month.

"Never scalped white people," the old Indian shot back. "Father did
when--young man. Did great scalp business!"

Mukoki had not done chuckling to himself even when they r