ellow October
days lulling the north into temporary forgetfulness of the menace of the
bitter months to come. Then the unleashed winds from the Arctic
freighted with the first of the long snows beat down the coast and river
valleys, locking the land with ice. But far in the Windigo-haunted hills
of the forbidden land of the Crees a man and a boy, snug in snow-banked
tepee, laughed as the winds whined through November nights and the snow
made deep in the timber, for their cache was heaped high with frozen
trout, whitefish and caribou.

With the coming of the snow, the puppies, young as they were, soon
learned that the life of a husky was not all mad pursuit of rabbit or
wood-mouse and stalking of ptarmigan; not all rioting through the
"bush," on the trail of some mysterious four-footed forest denizen; not
alone the gulping of a supper of toothsome whitefish or trout, followed
by a long nap curled in a cosy hole in the snow, gray noses thrust into
bushy tails. Although their wolf-blood made them, at first, less
amenable than the average husky puppy to the discipline of collar and
traces, their great mother, through the force of her example as lead-dog
and the swift punishment she meted out to any culprit, contributed as
much as Jean's own efforts to the breaking of the puppies to harness.

Jules, the largest, marked like his mother with slate-gray patches on
head and back was all dog; but the rogues, Colin and Angus, mottled with
the lighter gray of their sire, and with his rangier build, inherited
much of his wolf nature. Many a whipping from the long lash of plaited
caribou hide, many a sharp nip from Fleur's white teeth, were required
to teach the young wolves the manners of camp and trail; to bend their
wild wills to the habit of instant obedience to the voice of Jean
Marcel. But Fleur was a conscientious mother and under her stern
tutelage and the firm but kind treatment of Jean,--who loved to rough
and wrestle the puppies in the dry snow, rolling them on their backs and
holding them helpless in the grip of his sinewy hands--as the shaggy
ruffians grew in the wisdom of trace and trail, so in their wild natures
ripened love for the master who fed and romped with them, meting out
punishment to him alone who had sinned.

In search of black and silver foxes, whose pelts, worth in the world of
cities their weight in gold, are the chief inspiration of the red
hunter's dreams, Jean had run his new trap-lines far in the va