ir beside
him stood another man. He was thin, with drooping shoulders, and a pale
smooth face--a little man, whose physique and hollow cheeks told nothing
of the years he had spent close up along the raw edge of the Arctic. It
was he who spoke now, while the sergeant held up his hand. His voice was
low and quiet:

"I'll give the owners five hundred dollars for those dogs," he said.

Every man in the room heard the offer. Harker looked at Sandy. For an
instant their heads were close together.

"They won't fight, and they'll make good team-mates," the little man
went on. "I'll give the owners five hundred dollars."

Harker raised a hand.

"Make it six," he said. "Make it six and they're yours."

The little man hesitated. Then he nodded.

"I'll give you six hundred," he agreed.

Murmurs of discontent rose throughout the crowd. Harker climbed to the
edge of the platform.

"We ain't to blame because they wouldn't fight," he shouted, "but if
there's any of you small enough to want your money back you can git it
as you go out. The dogs laid down on us, that's all. We ain't to blame."

The little man was edging his way between the chairs, accompanied by the
sergeant of police. With his pale face close to the sapling bars of the
cage he looked at Kazan and the big Dane.

"I guess we'll be good friends," he said, and he spoke so low that only
the dogs heard his voice. "It's a big price, but we'll charge it to the
Smithsonian, lads. I'm going to need a couple of four-footed friends of
your moral caliber."

And no one knew why Kazan and the Dane drew nearer to the little
scientist's side of the cage as he pulled out a big roll of bills and
counted out six hundred dollars for Harker and Sandy McTrigger.

CHAPTER XXIV

ALONE IN DARKNESS

Never had the terror and loneliness of blindness fallen upon Gray Wolf
as in the days that followed the shooting of Kazan and his capture by
Sandy McTrigger. For hours after the shot she crouched in the bush back
from the river, waiting for him to come to her. She had faith that he
would come, as he had come a thousand times before, and she lay close on
her belly, sniffing the air, and whining when it brought no scent of her
mate. Day and night were alike an endless chaos of darkness to her now,
but she knew when the sun went down. She sensed the first deepening
shadows of evening, and she knew that the stars were out, and that the
river lay in moonlight. It was a night to