hen he rose to his feet, a look of perplexity and
doubt in his eyes.

"What was it, Peter? Can the wind shoot a gun--like _that_?"

Peter was sniffing at the loosely blocked door of their snow-room. A
whimper rose in his throat. He looked up at Jolly Roger, his eyes
glowing fiercely through the mass of Airedale whiskers that covered his
face. He wanted to dig. He wanted to plunge out into the howling
darkness. Slowly McKay beat the ash out of his pipe and placed the pipe
in his pocket.

"We'll take a look," he said, something repressive in his voice. "But
it isn't reasonable, Peter. It is the wind. There couldn't be a man out
there, and it wasn't a rifle we heard. It is the wind--with the devil
himself behind it!"

With a few sweeps of his hands and arms he scooped out the loose snow
from the hole. The opening was on the sheltered side of the drift, and
only the whirling eddies of the storm swept about him as he thrust out
his head and shoulders. But over him it was rushing like an avalanche.
He could hear nothing but the moaning advance of it. And he could see
nothing. He held out his hand before his face, and blackness swallowed
it.

"We have been chased so much that we're what you might call
super-sensitive," he said, pulling himself back and nodding at Peter in
the gray light of the alcohol lamp. "Guess we'd better turn in, boy.
This is a good place to sleep--plenty of fresh air, no mosquitoes or
black flies, and the police so far away that we will soon forget how
they look. If you say so we will have a nip of cold tea and a bite--"

He did not finish. For a moment the wind had lessened in fury, as if
gathering a deeper breath. And what he heard drew a cry from him this
time, and a sharper whine from Peter. Out of the blackness of the night
had come a woman's voice! In that first instant of shock and amazement
he would have staked his life that what he heard was not a mad outcry
of the night or an illusion of his brain. It was clear--distinct--a
woman's voice coming from out on the Barren, rising above the storm in
an agony of appeal, and dying out quickly until it became a part of the
moaning wind. And then, with equal force, came the absurdity of it to
McKay. A woman! He swallowed the lump that had risen in his throat, and
tried to laugh. A WOMAN--out in that storm--a thousand miles from
nowhere! It was inconceivable.

The laugh which he forced from his lips was husky and unreal, and there
was a smotherin