ent'
hungr'--"

Bram was standing just outside of his line of vision. He had not spoken
loudly or threateningly, but Philip felt in the words a cold and
unexcited deadliness of purpose against which he knew that it would be
madness for him to fight. Bram had more than the bad man's ordinary
drop on him. In his wolves he possessed not only an advantage but a
certainty. If Philip had doubted this, as he waited for another moment
with the muzzle of his revolver close to the opening, his uncertainty
was swept away by the appearance thirty feet in front of his tunnel of
three of Bram's wolves. They were giants of their kind, and as the
three faced his refuge he could see the snarling gleam of their long
fangs. A fourth and a fifth joined them, and after that they came
within his vision in twos and threes until a score of them were huddled
straight in front of him. They were restless and whining, and the snap
of their jaws was like the clicking of castanets. He caught the glare
of twenty pairs of eyes fastened on his retreat and involuntarily he
shrank back that they might not see him. He knew that it was Bram who
was holding them back, and yet he had heard no word, no command. Even
as he stared a long snakelike shadow uncurled itself swiftly in the air
and the twenty foot lash of Bram's caribou-gut whip cracked viciously
over the heads of the pack. At the warning of the whip the horde of
beasts scattered, and Bram's voice came again.

"M'sieu--ze revolv'--ze knife--or I loose ze wolve--"

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Philip's revolver flew
through the opening and dropped in the snow.

"There it is, old man," announced Philip. "And here comes the knife."

His sheath-knife followed the revolver.

"Shall I throw out my bed?" he asked.

He was making a tremendous effort to appear cheerful. But he could not
forget that last night he had shot at Bram, and that it was not at all
unreasonable to suppose that Bram might knock his brains out when he
stuck his head out of the hole. The fact that Bram made no answer to
his question about the bed did not add to his assurance. He repeated
the question, louder than before, and still there was no answer. In the
face of his perplexity he could not repress a grim chuckle as he rolled
up his blankets. What a report he would have for the Department--if he
lived to make it! On paper there would be a good deal of comedy about
it--this burrowing oneself up like a hibernati