n
red foxes in the face of Grouse Piet.

"Cover them, Grouse Piet," he cried. "And I have ten times more where
they came from!"

With his muzzle lifted, Miki was sniffing the air. It was filled with
strange scents, heavy with the odours of men, of dogs, and of the five
huge caribou roasting on their spits fifteen feet over the big fires
that were built under them. For ten hours those caribou would roast,
turning slowly on spits as thick as a man's leg. The fight was to come
before the feast.

For an hour the clatter and tumult of voices hovered about the two
cages. Men appraised the fighters and made their bets, and Grouse Piet
and Henri Durant made their throats hoarse flinging banter and contempt
at each other. At the end of the hour the crowd began to thin out. In
the place of men and women half a hundred dark-visaged little children
crowded about the cages. It was not until then that Miki caught
glimpses of the hordes of beasts fastened in ones and twos and groups
in the edge of the clearing. His nostrils had at last caught the
distinction. They were not wolves. They were like himself.

It was a long time before his eyes rested steadily on the wolf-dog in
the other cage. He went to the edge of his bars and sniffed. The
wolf-dog thrust his gaunt muzzle toward him. He made Miki think of the
huge wolf he had fought one day on the edge of the cliff, and
instinctively he showed his fangs, and snarled. The wolf-dog snarled
back. Henri Durant rubbed his hands exultantly, and Grouse Piet laughed
softly.

"Oui; they will FIGHT!" said Henri again.

"Ze wolf, he will fight, oui," said Grouse Piet. "But your dog, m'sieu,
he be vair seek, lak a puppy, w'en ze fight come!"

A little later Miki saw a white man standing close to his cage. It was
MacDonnell, the Scotch factor. He gazed at Miki and the wolf-dog with
troubled eyes. Ten minutes later, in the little room which he had made
his office, he was saying to a younger man:

"I'd like to stop it, but I can't. They wouldn't stand for it. It would
lose us half a season's catch of fur. There's been a fight like this at
Fort O' God for the last fifty years, and I don't suppose, after all,
that it's any worse than one of the prize fights down there. Only, in
this case--"

"They kill," said the younger man.

"Yes, that's it. Usually one of the dogs dies."

The younger man knocked the ash out of his pipe.

"I love dogs," he said, simply. "There'll never be a fight at my