running
alongside shouting _Hi-hi_ and cracking their whips, they could still
see, over their shoulders, the wolves following lightly close behind;
but when they rushed breathless into their houses, and grabbed their
guns, and ran back on the trail, there was nothing to be seen. For the
wolves, quick as light to feel the presence of danger, were already far
away, trotting swiftly up the frozen arm of the harbor, following
another sledge trail which came down that morning from the wilderness.

That same night the wolves appeared silently in the little lodge, far up
the Southeast Brook, where in a sheltered hollow of the hills the
fishermen's families were sleeping away the bitter winter. Here for one
long night they watched and waited in vain; for every living thing was
safe in the tilts behind barred doors. In the morning little Noel's eyes
kindled as he saw the wolves' tracks; and when they came back again the
tilts were watching. As the lop-eared cub darted after a cat that shot
like a ray of moonlight under a cabin, a window opened noiselessly, and
_zing!_ a bowstring twanged its sharp warning in the tense silence. With
a yelp the wolf tore the arrow from his shoulder. The warm blood
followed the barb, and he lapped it eagerly in his hunger. Then, as the
danger swept over him, he gave the trail cry and darted away. Doors
banged open here and there; dogs barked to crack their throats; seal
guns roared out and sent their heavy echoes crashing like thunder among
the hills. Silence fell again over the lodge; and there were left only a
few frightened dogs whose noses had already told them everything, a few
fishermen who watched and listened, and one Indian boy with a long bow
in his hand and an arrow ready on the string, who trailed away with a
little girl at his side trying to puzzle out the track of one wolf that
left a drop of blood here and there on the snow in the scant moonlight.

Far up on the hillside in a little opening of the woods the scattered
pack came together again. At the first uproar, so unbearable to a
silence-loving animal, they had vanished in five different directions;
yet so subtle, so perfect is the instinct which holds a wolf family
together that the old mother had scarcely entered the glade alone and
sat down to wait and listen when the other wolves joined her silently.
Malsunsis, the big cub, scarcely felt his wound at first, for the arrow
had but glanced through the thick skin and flesh, and he