afraid any
more so long as I don't get too familiar with people for a year or so
longer, and 'way down inside me I've liked to believe God fixed it up
in that way to help me out of a bad hole. What's YOUR opinion? Eh?"

He leaned forward for an answer. Baree had listened. Perhaps, in a way,
he had understood. But it was another sound than Carvel's voice that
came to his ears now. With his head close to the ground he heard it
quite distinctly. He whined, and the whine ended in a snarl so low that
Carvel just caught the warning note in it. He straightened. He stood up
then, and faced the south. Baree stood beside him, his legs tense and
his spine bristling.

After a moment Carvel said:

"Relatives of yours, old chap. Wolves."

He went into the tent for his rifle and cartridges.

CHAPTER 29

Baree was on his feet, rigid as hewn rock, when Carvel came out of the
tent, and for a few moments Carvel stood in silence, watching him
closely. Would the dog respond to the call of the pack? Did he belong
to them? Would he go--now? The wolves were drawing nearer. They were
not circling, as a caribou or a deer would have circled, but were
traveling straight--dead straight for their camp. The significance of
this fact was easily understood by Carvel. All that afternoon Baree's
feet had left a blood smell in their trail, and the wolves had struck
the trail in the deep forest, where the falling snow had not covered
it. Carvel was not alarmed. More than once in his five years of
wandering between the Arctic and the Height of Land he had played the
game with the wolves. Once he had almost lost, but that was out in the
open Barren. Tonight he had a fire, and in the event of his firewood
running out he had trees he could climb. His anxiety just now was
centered in Baree. So he said, making his voice quite casual:

"You aren't going, are you, old chap?"

If Baree heard him he gave no evidence of it. But Carvel, still
watching him closely, saw that the hair along his spine had risen like
a brush, and then he heard--growing slowly in Baree's throat--a snarl
of ferocious hatred. It was the sort of snarl that had held back the
factor from Lac Bain, and Carvel, opening the breech of his gun to see
that all was right, chuckled happily. Baree may have heard the chuckle.
Perhaps it meant something to him, for he turned his head suddenly and
with flattened ears looked at his companion.

The wolves were silent now. Carvel knew what that