u before, when
the timber wolf gets his blood up he is absolutely fearless. No sooner
did one of the great gray brutes drop than another leaped into his place,
his green eyes glowing balefully and his jaws snapping.

"When both my revolves were empty I clubbed my rifle, and lashed away at
the long-pointed heads that were so close to me. Once or twice one would
catch the butt of the gun in his teeth, and the marks are in the wood to
this day.

"Well, I was so busy fighting off the wolves that I had no time to notice
how near we were to camp. But suddenly my heart gave a great leap as I
heard a yell in front of me and recognized the voice of my partner.

"I looked ahead and saw that I had almost reached our shack. My partner
was standing in the doorway, rifle in hand, and even as I looked came
running out toward me. In a few seconds the faithful horse had carried me
almost to the shack, and I leaped to the ground. My partner took up a
stand alongside me, and as the wolves came on we cleared a space about us
with the clubbed rifles. We realized we couldn't keep that up long,
though, so we retreated to the cabin. We backed in, but were unable to
shut the door before one big gray brute squeezed inside. He was nothing
dismayed at being separated from his companions, but leaped straight for
us. I fetched him a stunning blow with the butt of my rifle, and before
he could recover we both fell upon him and despatched him with our
hunting knives. That was about as close a shave as I ever had," and as he
finished his story Mr. Melton shook his head.

"I should think it must have been," said Bert, drawing a long breath,
"but what did the rest of the wolves do when they found themselves shut
out?"

"Oh, my partner and I shot at them from the window until we had killed
over a dozen, and the rest, finding that they could not get at us, took
themselves off."

"Did they kill the horses?" asked Tom.

"No," replied Mr. Melton, "for some reason they didn't chase them. The
next morning we found them both outside the shack none the worse for
their adventure. And a mighty lucky thing for us it was, because the loss
of our horses then would have meant the failure of all our plans."

"I suppose you went back and got the sled the next day, didn't you?"
inquired Dick.

"Oh, yes," replied his host, "we recovered it all right, but then we had
to go back to the settlement for more grub, of course. But I was so happy
at having escaped with