disemboweled offal. Where Bram had dragged his
meat there was a small circle worn by moccasin tracks, and here, too,
were small bits of flesh, scattered about--the discarded remnants of
Bram's own feast.

The snow told as clearly as a printed page what had happened after
that. Its story amazed Philip. From somewhere Bram had produced a
sledge, and on this sledge he had loaded what remained of the caribou
meat. From the marks in the snow Philip saw that it had been of the low
ootapanask type, but that it was longer and broader than any sledge he
had ever seen. He did not have to guess at what had happened.
Everything was too clear for that. Far back on the Barren Bram had
loosed his pack at sight of the caribou, and the pursuit and kill had
followed. After that, when beasts and man had gorged themselves, they
had returned through the night for the sledge. Bram had made a wide
detour so that he would not again pass near the finger of scrub timber
that concealed his enemy, and with a curious quickening of the blood in
his veins Philip observed how closely the pack hung at his heels. The
man was master--absolutely. Later they had returned with the sledge,
Bram had loaded his meat, and with his pack had struck out straight
north over the Barren. Every wolf was in harness, and Bram rode on the
sledge.

Philip drew a deep breath. He was learning new things about Bram
Johnson. First he assured himself that Bram was not afraid, and that
his disappearance could not be called a flight. If fear of capture had
possessed him he would not have returned for his meat. Suddenly he
recalled Pierre Breault's story of how Bram had carried off the
haunches of a bull upon his shoulders as easily as a child might have
carried a toy gun, and he wondered why Bram--instead of returning for
the meat this night--had not carried the meat to his sledge. It would
have saved time and distance. He was beginning to give Bram credit for
a deeply mysterious strategy. There was some definite reason why he had
not made an attack with his wolves that night. There was a reason for
the wide detour around the point of timber, and there was a still more
inexplicable reason why he had come back with his sledge for the meat,
instead of carrying his meat to the sledge. The caribou haunch had not
weighed more than sixty or seventy pounds, which was scarcely half a
burden for Bram's powerful shoulders.

In the edge of the timber, where he could secure wood for his