t Wabigoon, speaking no word. He sat down close
beside it, with his arm resting upon it, and when he looked up at Rod
there was an expression in his face which spoke more than words.

"Poor old Wolf!"

Rod turned and walked to the edge of the plateau, something hot and
uncomfortable filling his eyes. Below him, as far as he could see,
there stretched the vast, mysterious wilderness that reached to Hudson
Bay. And somewhere out there in that limitless space was Wolf.

As he looked, the hot film clouding his vision, he thought of the old
tragedy in Mukoki's life, and of how Wolf had helped him to avenge
himself. In his imagination he went back to that terrible day many,
many years ago, when Mukoki, happy in the strength of his youth, found
his young wife and child dead upon the trail, killed by wolves; he
thought of the story that Wabi had told him of the madness that came
to the young warrior, of how year after year he followed the trail of
wolves, wreaking his vengeance on their breed. And last he thought
of Wolf--how Mukoki and Wabigoon had found the whelp in one of their
traps; how they tamed him, grew to love him, and taught him to decoy
other wolves to their riffes. Wolf had been their comrade of a few
months before; fearless, faithful, until at last, escaping from the
final murderous assault of the Woongas, he had fled into the forests,
while his human friends fought their way back to civilization.

Where was Wolf now?

Unconsciously Rod questioned himself aloud, and from close behind him
Wabi answered.

"With the hunt-pack, Rod. He's forgotten us; gone back to the wild."

"Gone back to the wild, yes," said Rod; "but forgotten us, no!"

Wabi made no reply.

CHAPTER X

THE MYSTERIOUS SHOT

For many minutes the two stood silently gazing into the North. At
their feet spread the broad plain where Mukoki had killed the caribou
while they watched him from the plateau; beyond that were the dense
stretches of forest, broken here and there by other plains and
meadows, and a dozen lakes glistened in the red tints of the setting
sun. When Rod first looked upon that country a few months before it
was a world of ice and snow, a cold, dazzling panorama of white that
reached from where he stood to the Pole. Now it was wakening under
the first magic touch of spring. Far away the two young gold hunters
caught a glimmer of the stream which they were to follow up to the
chasm. Last winter it had been a tiny cree