But it could not last long.His face was blistering in the heat, his eyebrows and lashes were singed off, and the heat was becoming unbearable to his feet.With a flaming brand in each hand, he sprang to the edge of the fire.The wolves had been driven back.On every side, wherever the live coals had fallen, the snow was sizzling, and every little while a retiring wolf, with wild leap and snort and snarl, announced that one such live coal had been stepped upon.
Flinging his brands at the nearest of his enemies, the man thrust his smouldering mittens into the snow and stamped about to cool his feet.His two dogs were missing, and he well knew that they had served as a course in the protracted meal which had begun days before with Fatty, the last course of which would likely be himself in the days to follow.
"You ain't got me yet!" he cried, savagely shaking his fist at the hungry beasts; and at the sound of his voice the whole circle was agitated, there was a general snarl, and the she-wolf slid up close to him across the snow and watched him with hungry wistfulness.
He set to work to carry out a new idea that had come to him.He extended the fire into a large circle.Inside this circle he crouched, his sleeping outfit under him as a protection against the melting snow.When he had thus disappeared within his shelter of flame, the whole pack came curiously to the rim of the fire to see what had become of him.Hitherto they had been denied access to the fire, and they now settled down in a close-drawn circle, like so many dogs, blinking and yawning and stretching their lean bodies in the unaccustomed warmth.Then the she-wolf sat down, pointed her nose at a star, and began to howl.One by one the wolves joined her, till the whole pack, on haunches, with noses pointed skyward, was howling its hunger cry.
Dawn came, and daylight.The fire was burning low.The fuel had run out, and there was need to get more.The man attempted to step out of his circle of flame, but the wolves surged to meet him.Burning brands made them spring aside, but they no longer sprang back.In vain he strove to drive them back.As he gave up and stumbled inside his circle, a wolf leaped for him, missed, and landed with all four feet in the coals.It cried out with terror, at the same time snarling, and scrambled back to cool its paws in the snow.
The man sat down on his blankets in a crouching position.His body leaned forward from the hips.His shoulders, relaxed and drooping, and his head on his knees advertised that he had given up the struggle.Now and again he raised his head to note the dying down of the fire.The circle of flame and coals was breaking into segments with openings in between.These openings grew in size, the segments diminished.
"I guess you can come an' get me any time," he mumbled."Anyway, I'm goin' to sleep."Once he wakened, and in an opening in the circle, directly in front of him, he saw the she-wolf gazing at him.
Again he awakened, a little later, though it seemed hours to him.Amysterious change had taken place -- so mysterious a change that he was shocked wider awake.Something had happened.He could not understand at first.Then he discovered it.The wolves were gone.Remained only the trampled snow to show how closely they had pressed him.Sleep was welling up and gripping him again, his head was sinking down upon his knees, when he roused with a sudden start.
There were cries of men, the churn of sleds, the creaking of harnesses, and the eager whimpering of straining dogs.Four sleds pulled in from the river bed to the camp among the trees.Half a dozen men were about the man who crouched in the centre of the dying fire.They were shaking and prodding him into consciousness.He looked at them like a drunken man and maundered in strange, sleepy speech:
"Red she-wolf....Come in with the dogs at feedin' time....First she ate the dog-food....Then she ate the dogs....An' after that she ate Bill....""Where's Lord Alfred?" one of the men bellowed in his ear, shaking him roughly.
He shook his head slowly."No, she didn't eat him....He's roostin'
in a tree at the last camp."
"Dead?" the man shouted.
"An' in a box," Henry answered.He jerked his shoulder petulantly away from the grip of his questioner."Say, you lemme alone....I'm jes'
plumb tuckered out....Goo' night, everybody."His eyes fluttered and went shut.His chin fell forward on his chest.
And even as they eased him down upon the blankets his snores were rising on the frosty air.
But there was another sound.Far and faint it was, in the remote distance, the cry of the hungry wolf-pack as it took the trail of other meat than the man it had just missed.
