in the storm, the scouts set about
making themselves thoroughly comfortable.

With their snowshoes they dug away the snow in a circle a dozen feet
across, piling it up on the outside so as to make that as high as
possible. When they were down to the ground, the wall of snow around
them was five feet high. Now they went forth with the hatchets, cut many
small spruces, and piled them against the living spruces about the camp
till there was a dense mass of evergreen foliage ten feet high around
them, open only at the top, where was a space five feet across. With
abundance of dry spruce wood, a thick bed of balsam boughs, and plenty
of blankets they were in what most woodmen consider comfort complete.

They had nothing to do now but wait. Quonab sat placidly smoking, Rolf
was sewing a rent in his coat, the storm hissed, and the wind-driven ice
needles rattled through the trees to vary the crackle of the fire with a
"siss" as they fell on the embers. The low monotony of sound was lulling
in its evenness, when a faint crunch of a foot on the snow was heard.
Rolf reached for his gun, the fir tree screen was shaken a little, and a
minute later there bounded in upon them the snow covered form of little
dog Skookum, expressing his good-will by excessive sign talk in which
every limb and member had a part. They had left him behind, indeed, but
not with his consent, so the bargain was incomplete.

There was no need to ask now, What shall we do with him? Skookum had
settled that, and why or how he never attempted to explain.

He was wise who made it law that "as was his share who went forth to
battle, so shall his be that abode with the stuff," for the hardest of
all is the waiting. In the morning there was less doing in the elemental
strife. There were even occasional periods of calm and at length it grew
so light that surely the veil was breaking.

Quonab returned from a brief reconnoitre to say, "Ugh!--good going."

The clouds were broken and flying, the sun came out at times, but the
wind was high, the cold intense, and the snow still drifting. Poor
Skookum had it harder than the men, for they wore snowshoes; but he kept
his troubles to himself and bravely trudged along behind. Had he been
capable of such reflection he might have said, "What delightful weather,
it keeps the fleas so quiet."

That day there was little to note but the intense cold, and again both
men had their cheeks frost-bitten on the north side. A nook un