and had remained there. The wolves
swept on and round the miserable place--some actually raced through the
snowed-up street--and took up the continued trail on the other side.

Anon they came to an open plain, where the trail split, many of the
beaters that were left striking away to another village where they
lived; but the white wolf tore straight on along the main trail, the
trail of the hunters, the attendants, and the pack-horses. And the
shadows of the wolves in the moonlight kept pace with them all that
terrible way.

The plain looked flat, but was gently undulating, like some gigantic
ocean petrified; so that, in due time, the pack, still giving tongue
wildly and terribly, saw before them, far, far ahead, a procession of
dots straggling along over the endless, unbroken white. And instantly
their music shut off as if at the wave of an invisible hand.

Then, as the quarry ran from scent to view, they raced. All their
long, loose, nickel-steel-limbed, tireless gallop before had been
nothing to their flying speed now. The taint of the blood of the
slaughtered game from the chase was in their sensitive nostrils. It
was like the sight of rare wines to a drunkard. Shift! Say, but the
way those long-legged demons ate up the distance between them and their
prey was awe-inspiring. It was uncanny. It was almost magic. It was
awful.

Then things happened, as you might say, with some rapidity.

Three shots rang out in the silence--three shots in quick succession.
They were fired at the wolves by the only man in the group who had an
efficient rifle, but were really meant to recall the sleighs with the
sportsmen _and_ the rifles, which had gone on.

The wolves spread out into a long line; the ends of the line crept
forward swiftly on either hand, and the whole pack raced to the attack
in the formation of a Zulu impi--in the shape of a pair of horns, that
is. When the points of the horns got on the far side of their "prey,"
they rushed together, and turned inwards, still at full gallop.

At this juncture the sleighs came back--at the gallop, too.
Four .450-caliber Express rifle bullets, one .375-caliber magazine and
one .315-caliber magazine bullet, arriving among the wolves in quick
succession produced no confusion. Not a wolf stopped. Each beast
continued its tireless gallop, swerving and dispersing as it raced, and
without uttering a sound, till, almost before you could realize what
had happened at all,