. The
first bait was untouched. The second was as he had planted it. The third
was gone. A thrill shot through Sandy as he looked about him. Somewhere
within a radius of two or three hundred yards he would find his game.
Then his glance fell to the ground under the bush where he had hung the
poison capsule and an oath broke from his lips. The bait had not been
eaten. The caribou fat lay scattered under the bush and still imbedded
in the largest portion of it was the little white capsule--unbroken. It
was Sandy's first experience with a wild creature whose instincts were
sharpened by blindness, and he was puzzled. He had never known this to
happen before. If a fox or a wolf could be lured to the point of
touching a bait, it followed that the bait was eaten. Sandy went on to
the fourth and the fifth baits. They were untouched. The sixth was torn
to pieces, like the third. In this instance the capsule was broken and
the white powder scattered. Two more poison baits Sandy found pulled
down in this manner. He knew that Kazan and Gray Wolf had done the work,
for he found the marks of their feet in a dozen different places. The
accumulated bad humor of weeks of futile labor found vent in his
disappointment and anger. At last he had found something tangible to
curse. The failure of his poison baits he accepted as a sort of climax
to his general bad luck. Everything was against him, he believed, and he
made up his mind to return to Red Gold City. Early in the afternoon he
launched his canoe and drifted down-stream with the current. He was
content to let the current do all of the work to-day, and he used his
paddle just enough to keep his slender craft head on. He leaned back
comfortably and smoked his pipe, with the old rifle between his knees.
The wind was in his face and he kept a sharp watch for game.

It was late in the afternoon when Kazan and Gray Wolf came out on a
sand-bar five or six miles down-stream. Kazan was lapping up the cool
water when Sandy drifted quietly around a bend a hundred yards above
them. If the wind had been right, or if Sandy had been using his paddle,
Gray Wolf would have detected danger. It was the metallic click-click of
the old-fashioned lock of Sandy's rifle that awakened her to a sense of
peril. Instantly she was thrilled by the nearness of it. Kazan heard the
sound and stopped drinking to face it. In that moment Sandy pressed the
trigger. A belch of smoke, a roar of gunpowder, and Kazan felt a r