erre Breault had said. Bram and his pack hunted
like that. And it was Bram who was coming. He knew it.

He ran back to his tent and in what remained of the heat of the fire he
warmed for a few moments the breech of his rifle. Then he smothered the
fire by kicking snow over it. Returning to the edge of the plain, he
posted himself near the largest spruce he could find, up which it would
be possible for him to climb a dozen feet or so if necessity drove him
to it. And this necessity bore down upon him like the wind. The pack,
whether guided by man or beast, was driving straight at him, and it was
less than a quarter of a mile away when Philip drew himself up in the
spruce. His breath came quick, and his heart was thumping like a drum,
for as he climbed up the slender refuge that was scarcely larger in
diameter than his arm he remembered the time when he had hung up a
thousand pounds of moose meat on cedars as thick as his leg, and the
wolves had come the next night and gnawed them through as if they had
been paper. From his unsteady perch ten feet off the ground he stared
out into the starlit Barren.

Then came the other sound. It was the swift chug, chug, chug of
galloping feet--of hoofs breaking through the crust of the snow. A
shape loomed up, and Philip knew it was a caribou running for its life.
He drew an easier breath as he saw that the animal was fleeing parallel
with the projecting finger of scrub in which he had made his camp, and
that it would strike the timber a good mile below him. And now, with a
still deeper thrill, he noted the silence of the pursuing wolves. It
meant but one thing. They were so close on the heels of their prey that
they no longer made a sound. Scarcely had the caribou disappeared when
Philip saw the first of them--gray, swiftly moving shapes, spread out
fan-like as they closed in on two sides for attack, so close that he
could hear the patter of their feet and the blood-curdling whines that
came from between their gaping jaws. There were at least twenty of
them, perhaps thirty, and they were gone with the swiftness of shadows
driven by a gale.

From his uncomfortable position Philip lowered himself to the snow
again. With its three or four hundred yard lead he figured that the
caribou would almost reach the timber a mile away before the end came.
Concealed in the shadow of the spruce, he waited. He made no effort to
analyze the confidence with which he watched for Bram. When he at last