zed him now was
that the trail under his eyes had not been made by Eskimo usamuks. The
tracks were long and narrow. The web imprint in the snow was not that
of the broad narwhal strip, but the finer mesh of babiche. It was
possible that an Eskimo was wearing them, but they were A WHITE MAN'S
SHOES!

And then he made another discovery. For a dozen paces he followed in
the trail, allowing six inches with each step he took as the snowshoe
handicap. Even at that he could not easily cover the tracks. The man
who had made them had taken a longer snowshoe stride than his own by at
least nine inches. He could no longer keep the excitement of his
discovery from Celie.

"The Eskimo never lived who could make that track," he exclaimed. "They
can travel fast enough but they're a bunch of runts when it comes to
leg-swing. It's a white man--or Bram!"

The announcement of the wolf-man's name and Philip's gesture toward the
trail drew a quick little cry of understanding from Celie. In a flash
she had darted to the snowshoe tracks and was examining them with eager
intensity. Then she looked up and shook her head. It wasn't Bram! She
pointed to the tail of the shoe and catching up a twig broke it under
Philip's eyes. He remembered now. The end of Bram's shoes was snubbed
short off. There was no evidence of that defect in the snow. It was not
Bram who had passed that way.

For a space he stood undecided. He knew that Celie was watching
him--that she was trying to learn something of the tremendous
significance of that moment from his face. The same unseen force that
had compelled him to wait and watch for his foes a short time before
seemed urging him now to follow the strange snowshoe trail. Enemy or
friend the maker of those tracks would at least be armed. The thought
of what a rifle and a few cartridges would mean to him and Celie now
brought a low cry of decision from him. He turned quickly to Celie.

"He's going east--and we ought to go north to find the cabin," he told
her, pointing to the trail. "But we'll follow him. I want his rifle. I
want it more than anything else in this world, now that I've got you.
We'll follow--"

If there had been a shadow of hesitation in his mind it was ended in
that moment. From behind them there came a strange hooting cry. It was
not a yell such as they had heard before. It was a booming far-reaching
note that had in it the intonation of a drum--a sound that made one
shiver because of its very