ng
death by field and flood and famine, had they knitted the bonds of
their comradeship. So close was the tie that he had often been
conscious of a vague jealousy of Ruth, from the first time she had come
between. And now it must be severed by his own hand.

Though he prayed for a moose, just one moose, all game seemed to have
deserted the land, and nightfall found the exhausted man crawling into
camp, lighthanded, heavyhearted. An uproar from the dogs and shrill
cries from Ruth hastened him.

Bursting into the camp, he saw the girl in the midst of the snarling
pack, laying about her with an ax. The dogs had broken the iron rule of
their masters and were rushing the grub.

He joined the issue with his rifle reversed, and the hoary game of
natural selection was played out with all the ruthlessness of its
primeval environment. Rifle and ax went up and down, hit or missed with
monotonous regularity; lithe bodies flashed, with wild eyes and
dripping fangs; and man and beast fought for supremacy to the bitterest
conclusion. Then the beaten brutes crept to the edge of the firelight,
licking their wounds, voicing their misery to the stars.

The whole stock of dried salmon had been devoured, and perhaps five
pounds of flour remained to tide them over two hundred miles of
wilderness. Ruth returned to her husband, while Malemute Kid cut up the
warm body of one of the dogs, the skull of which had been crushed by
the ax. Every portion was carefully put away, save the hide and offal,
which were cast to his fellows of the moment before.

Morning brought fresh trouble. The animals were turning on each other.
Carmen, who still clung to her slender thread of life, was downed by
the pack. The lash fell among them unheeded. They cringed and cried
under the blows, but refused to scatter till the last wretched bit had
disappeared--bones, hide, hair, everything.

Malemute Kid went about his work, listening to Mason, who was back in
Tennessee, delivering tangled discourses and wild exhortations to his
brethren of other days.

Taking advantage of neighboring pines, he worked rapidly, and Ruth
watched him make a cache similar to those sometimes used by hunters to
preserve their meat from the wolverines and dogs. One after the other,
he bent the tops of two small pines toward each other and nearly to the
ground, making them fast with thongs of moosehide. Then he beat the
dogs into submission and harnessed them to two of the sleds, loadin