easant to ears that were as closely
attentive as Peter's.

For Peter had crept up through a tangle of ground-scrub and lay not
twenty paces away, smelling of the bacon hungrily, and watching
intently from his concealment.

Peter knew the fox and the wolf, but he did not know Breault, and he
did not guess why the man's whistling grew a little louder, nor why his
humming voice grew stronger. But after a time, with his back and not
his face toward Peter, Breault called in the most natural and
matter-of-fact voice in the world,

"Come on, Peter. Breakfast is ready!"

Peter's jaws dropped in amazement. And as Breault turned toward him,
his thin face a-grin, and continued to invite him in a most
companionable way, he forgot his concealment entirely and stood up
straight, ready either to fight or fly.

Breault tossed him a dripping slice of bacon which he held in his hand.
It fell within a foot of Peter's nose, and Peter was ravenously hungry.
The delicious odor of it demoralized his senses and his caution. For a
few seconds he resisted, then thrust himself out toward it an inch at a
time, made a sudden grab, and swallowed it at one gulp.

Breault laughed outright, and with the first of the sun striking into
his face he did not look like an enemy to Peter.

A second slice of bacon followed the first, and then a third--until
Breault was frying another mess over the fire.

"That's partial payment for what you did up on the Barren," he was
saying inside himself. "If it hadn't been for you--"

He didn't even imagine the rest. Nor after that did he pay the
slightest attention to Peter. For Breault knew dogs possibly even
better than he knew men, and not by the smallest sign did he give Peter
to understand that he was interested in him at all. He washed his
dishes, whistling and humming, reloaded his pack on the raft, and once
more began poling his way downstream.

Peter, still in the edge of the scrub, was not only puzzled, but felt a
further sense of abandonment. After all, this man was not his enemy,
and he was leaving him as his master and mistress had left him. He
whined. And Breault was not out of sight when he trotted down to the
sandbar, and quickly found the scent of Nada and McKay. Purposely
Breault had left a lump of desiccated potato as big as his fist, and
this Peter ate as ravenously as he had eaten the bacon. Then, just as
Breault knew he would do, he began following the raft.

Breault did not hurry, and