bag near the dogs. A
little at a time Wapi dragged himself nearer until his head lay on
Dolores' coat. After that there was a long silence broken only by the
low voices of the woman and the man, and the heavy breathing of the
tired dogs. Wapi himself dozed off, but never for long. Then Dolores
nodded, and her head drooped until it found a pillow on Peter's
shoulder. Gently Peter drew a bearskin about her, and for a long time
sat wide-awake, guarding Uppy and baring his ears at intervals to
listen. A dozen times he saw Wapi's bloodshot eyes looking at him, and
twice he put out a hand to the dog's head and spoke to him in a whisper.

Even Peter's eyes were filmed by a growing drowsiness when Wapi drew
silently away and slunk suspiciously into the night. There was no
yapping foxes here, forty miles from the coast. An almost appalling
silence hung under the white stars, a silence broken only by the low
and distant moaning the wind always makes on the barrens. Wapi listened
to it, and he sniffed with his gray muzzle turned to the north. And
then he whined. Had Dolores or Peter seen him or heard the note in his
throat, they, too, would have stared back over the trail they had
traveled. For something was coming to Wapi. Faint, elusive, and
indefinable breath in the air, he smelled it in one moment, and the
next it was gone. For many minutes he stood undecided, and then he
returned to the sledge, his spine bristling and a growl in his throat.

Wide-eyed and staring, Peter was looking back. "What is it, Wapi?"

His voice aroused Dolores. She sat up with a start. The growl had grown
into a snarl in Wapi's throat.

"I think they are coming," said Peter calmly. "You'd better rouse Uppy.
He hasn't moved in the last two hours."

Something that was like a sob came from Dolores' lips as she stood up.
"They're not coming," she whispered. "They've stopped--and they're
building a fire!"

Not more than a third of a mile away a point of yellow flame flared up
in the night.

"Give me the revolver, Peter."

Peter gave it to her without a word. She went to Uppy, and at the touch
of her foot he was out of his sleeping-bag, his moon-face staring at
her. She pointed back to the fire. Her face was dead white. The
revolver was pointed straight at Uppy's heart.

"If they come up with us, Uppy--you die!"

The Eskimo's narrow eyes widened. There was murder in this white
woman's face, in the steadiness of her hand, and in her voice. If they