gainst the weight of snow but could not free himself. Months
later, when the spring thaw had come, his bones had been found picked
clean by his wolf-hounds. A child at Nome, Alaska, playing with his
father's team, was scratched by one of them. The smell of blood had set
them wild. They had attacked him, and before help could arrive had torn
him in pieces. These stories flooding his memory lent added speed to his
stalwart limbs.

He ran three miles, four, five miles. But at each added mile, the yelp of
the hounds came more distinctly to him. Now he could hear the loud flap as
they sucked in their lolling tongues.

He was becoming fatigued. Soon he must turn and stand at bay. He looked to
the right and left of him. A cutbank presented a steep perpendicular
surface against which he might take his stand with the knowledge that they
could not attack him from the rear.

"But shucks!" he half sobbed. "What's the use? I'll be frozen stiff before
they get courage to attack me."

To the cutbank he ran, then, turning, waited.

With rolling tongues, the dogs came hurrying up to form themselves into a
circle, seven gaunt, gray wolf-hounds grinning at one naked boy.

Then Johnny, catching the humor of the situation, not only grinned back,
but laughed outright, laughed long and loud. What he said when he had
finished was:

"Bowsie, you old rascal, why didn't you tell me it was you?"

It was his own team. Having been unhitched at the time, they had
recognized the stride of their master and had deserted with him. It was
indeed a joyous meeting.

There was, however, no time to be wasted. The bitter cold air made
Johnny's skin crinkle like parchment. His feet, in contact with the
stinging snow, were freezing.

Two of the dogs still wore their seal-skin harnesses. These Johnny tore
off of them and having broken the bindings, wound them in narrow strips
about his feet, tying them firmly around his ankles.

So, with his feet protected from the cold, he took up the fifteen miles of
homeward race, the seven dogs ki-yi-ing at his heels.

Five miles farther on, he came upon a cache built by some Reindeer
Chukche. In this he found a suit of deer skin. It was old, dirty and too
small, but he crowded into it gratefully. Then with knees exposed and arms
swinging bare to the elbows he prepared for a more leisurely ten miles
home. He was quite confident that the lazy and stolid Russians were not
following.

Johnny was well within sight