Full into the firelight, with a stealthy, sidelong movement, glided a doglike animal.It moved with commingled mistrust and daring, cautiously observing the men, its attention fixed on the dogs.One Ear strained the full length of the stick toward the intruder and whined with eagerness.
"That fool One Ear don't seem scairt much," Bill said in a low tone.
"It's a she-wolf," Henry whispered back, "an' that accounts for Fatty an' Frog.She's the decoy for the pack.She draws out the dog an' then all the rest pitches in an' eats 'm up."The fire crackled.A log fell apart with a loud spluttering noise.At the sound of it the strange animal leaped back into the darkness.
"Henry, I'm a-thinkin'," Bill announced.
"Thinkin' what?"
"I'm a-thinkin' that was the one I lambasted with the club.""Ain't the slightest doubt in the world," was Henry's response.
"An' right here I want to remark," Bill went on, "that that animal's familyarity with campfires is suspicious an' immoral.""It knows for certain more'n a self-respectin' wolf ought to know,"Henry agreed."A wolf that knows enough to come in with the dogs at feedin'
time has had experiences."
"Ol' Villan had a dog once that run away with the wolves," Bill cogitated aloud."I ought to know.I shot it out of the pack in a moose pasture over on Little Stick.An' Ol' Villan cried like a baby.Hadn't seen it for three years, he said.Ben with the wolves all that time.""I reckon you've called the turn, Bill.That wolf's a dog, an' it's eaten fish many's the time from the hand of man.""An' if I get a chance at it, that wolf that's a dog'll be jes' meat,"Bill declared."We can't afford to lose no more animals." "But you've only got three cartridges," Henry objected.
"I'll wait for a dead sure shot," was the reply.
In the morning Henry renewed the fire and cooked breakfast to the accompaniment of his partner's snoring.
"You was sleepin' jes' too comfortable for anythin'," Henry told him, as he routed him out for breakfast."I hadn't the heart to rouse you."Bill began to eat sleepily.He noticed that his cup was empty and started to reach for the pot.But the pot was beyond arm's length and beside Henry.
"Say, Henry," he chided gently, "ain't you forgot somethin'?"Henry looked about with great carefulness and shook his head.Bill held up the empty cup.
"You don't get no coffee," Henry announced.
"Ain't run out?" Bill asked anxiously.
"Nope."
"Ain't thinkin' it'll hurt my digestion?""Nope."
A flush of angry blood pervaded Bill's face.
"Then it's jes' warm an' anxious I am to be hearin' you explain yourself,"he said.
"Spanker's gone," Henry answered.
Without haste, with the air of one resigned to misfortune, Bill turned his head, and from where he sat counted the dogs.
"How'd it happen?" he asked apathetically.
Henry shrugged his shoulders."Don't know.Unless One Ear gnawed 'm loose.He couldn't a-done it himself, that's sure.""The darned cuss." Bill spoke gravely and slowly, with no hint of the anger that was raging within."Jes' because he couldn't chew himself loose, he chews Spanker loose.""Well, Spanker's troubles is over, anyway; I guess he's digested by this time an' cavortin' over the landscape in the bellies of twenty different wolves," was Henry's epitaph on this, the latest lost dog."Have some coffee, Bill."But Bill shook his head.
"Go on," Henry pleaded, elevating the pot.
Bill shoved his cup aside."I'll be ding-dong-danged if I do.I said I wouldn't if ary dog turned up missin', an' I won't.""It's darn good coffee," Henry said enticingly.
But Bill was stubborn, and he ate a dry breakfast, washed down with mumbled curses at One Ear for the trick he had played.
"I'll tie 'em up out of reach of each other to-night," Bill said, as they took the trail.
They had travelled little more than a hundred yards, when Henry, who was in front, bent down and picked up something with which his snowshoe had collided.It was dark, and he could not see it, but he recognized it by the touch.He flung it back, so that it struck the sled and bounced along until it fetched up on Bill's snowshoes.
"Mebbe you'll need that in your business," Henry said.
Bill uttered an exclamation.It was all that was left of Spanker --the stick with which he had been tied.
"They ate 'm hide an' all," Bill announced."The stick's as clean as a whistle.They've ate the leather offen both ends.They're damn hungry, Henry, an' they'll have you an' me guessin' before this trip's over."Henry laughed defiantly."I ain't been trailed this way by wolves before, but I've gone through a whole lot worse an' kept my health.Takes more'n a handful of them pesky critters to do for yours truly, Bill, my son.""I don't know, I don't know," Bill muttered ominously.
"Well, you'll know all right when we pull into McGurry.""I ain't feelin' special enthusiastic," Bill persisted.
"You're off color, that's what's the matter with you," Henry dogmatized.
"What you need is quinine, an' I'm goin' to dose you up stiff as soon as we make McGurry."Bill grunted his disagreement with the diagnosis, and lapsed into silence.
The day was like all the days.Light came at nine o'clock.At twelve o'clock the southern horizon was warmed by the unseen sun; and then began the cold gray of afternoon that would merge, three hours later, into night.
It was just after the sun's futile effort to appear, that Bill slipped the rifle from under the sled-lashings and said:
"You keep right on, Henry, I'm goin' to see what I can see.""You'd better stick by the sled," his partner protested."You've only got three cartridges, an' there's no tellin' what might happen.""Who's croakin' now?" Bill demanded triumphantly.
Henry made no reply, and plodded on alone, though often he cast anxious glances back into the gray solitude where his partner had disappeared.
An hour later, taking advantage of the cut-offs around which the sled had to go, Bill arrived.
