the terrors of a
winter journey and headed into the south. They traveled light, supplies
for three packed on a single sled, drawn by six dogs. Food had run low
and for a week they had been forced to subsist on starvation rations;
one more day and they would have killed a dog,--and then they crossed
the trail of a musk ox herd. There was now food in plenty but Collins'
mental exhaustion did not vanish with returning physical strength. He
was obsessed with the idea that he would never see the sagebrush hills
again and his companions could not rouse him.

They fastened the dogs in a clump of dwarfed spruce and built a small
fire on the downwind side of the trees.

The old wolfer sat huddled in his furs before the fire, dreading to
enter the little tent to crawl into his sleeping bag alone with his
thoughts; for the white madness was driving its iron into his soul and
striking at his reason. His mind coined queer white couplets; the white
wolf pack and the white ice pack,--a whole world shrouded in white
night.

His companions had looked upon the white madness before; had seen men
die from the deadly monotony of it all. It was conceivable that a book
of bright pictures, anything with warm colors might penetrate the pall
of white fog that clouded his brain and shatter the obsession,
reinstating reason on its tottering throne. But there was only the
howling of white wolves out across the white snow fields. Then a wolf
howl sounded from close at hand.

It seemed to pierce Collins' stupor and strike some memory filed long
ago in his subconscious mind, and he suddenly straightened and glared at
them.

"I can pick him out from amongst a thousand wolves," he stated. "There's
no wolf shiver to that howl. It's a yellow wolf! As yellow as gold, not
a damned white hair on him anywheres! It's Breed, the yellow wolf of
Sand Coulee Basin--there's color come into this white hell hole at
last!"

A shrill whistle pealed from his lips and his companions shook their
heads. Then the wolf howled again and they stiffened with surprise as a
score of wild voices answered. The sounds were new to them and the snowy
waste was filled with bewilderingly different inflections that ripped
back and forth through opposing waves of sound till it seemed that
jeering cachinnations rose from a thousand fiends.

They read the gleam in Collins' eyes and his disjointed utterances as a
sign of hopeless madness,--but in reality it was returning sanity. A