nd sash
containing his knife, rested against the windbreak, and his axe stood
in the snow where he had been cutting brush. From the snow the Indians
read the story of the long-drawn fight. Here it told how the great
wolf had leaped upon the back of the unsuspecting man while he was
carrying an armful of brush, and had knocked him down. There it showed
that the man had grappled with the brute and rolled it over upon its
back. Here the signs showed that the wolf had broken free; there, that
the two had grappled again, and in their struggle had rolled over and
over. The snow was now strewn with wolf-hair, and dyed with blood.
While the dreadful encounter had raged, the battleground had kept
steadily shifting nearer the gun. Just a couple of yards away from it
lay the frozen body of poor old Pot-fighter's-father. His deerskin
clothing was slit to tatters; his scalp was torn away; his fingers were
chewed off, but his bloody mouth was filled with hair and flesh of the
wolf.

After burying the body of old Pot-fighter's-father in a mound of
stones, the Indians determined to continue in pursuit of the wolf. Its
tracks at last led them to a solitary lodge that stood in the shelter
of a thicket of spruce. There the hunters were greeted by an Indian
who was living in the tepee with his wife and baby. After having a cup
of tea, a smoke, and then a little chat, the hunters enquired about the
tracks of the great wolf that had brought them to the lodge. The
Indian told them that during the night before last, while he and his
wife were asleep with the baby between them, they had been awakened by
a great uproar among the dogs. They had no sooner sat up than the dogs
had rushed into the tepee followed by an enormous wolf. Leaping up,
the hunter had seized his axe and attacked the beast, while his wife
had grabbed the baby, wrapped it in a blanket, and rushing outside, had
rammed the child out of sight in a snowdrift, and returned to help her
husband to fight the brute. The wolf had already killed one of the
dogs, and the Indian in his excitement had tripped upon the bedding,
fallen, and lost his grip upon his axe. When he rose, he found the
wolf between himself and his weapon. His wife, however, had seized a
piece of firewood and, being unobserved by the wolf, had used it as a
club and dealt the beast so powerful a blow upon the small of the back
that it had been seriously weakened and had given the Indian an
opportunity