ke animals--"

"Shadows!" he exclaimed. "The long shadows of foxes running against the
sun, or of the big gray rabbits, or of a wolf and her half-grown
sneaking away--"

"No, no, they were not that," she breathed tensely, and her fingers
clung more fiercely to his arm. "They were not shadows. _They
were men_!"

CHAPTER XXIV

In the moment of stillness between them, when their hearts seemed to
have stopped beating that they might not lose the faintest whispering of
the twilight, a sound came to Alan, and he knew it was the toe of a boot
striking against stone. Not a foot in his tribe would have made that
sound; none but Stampede Smith's or his own.

"Were they many?" he asked.

"I could not see. The sun was darkening. But five or six were running--"

"Behind us?"

"Yes."

"And they saw us?"

"I think so. It was but a moment, and they were a part of the dusk."

He found her hand and held it closely. Her fingers clung to his, and he
could hear her quick breathing as he unbuttoned the flap of his
automatic holster.

"You think _they have come_?" she whispered, and a cold dread was in her
voice.

"Possibly. My people would not appear from that direction. You are not
afraid?"

"No, no, I am not afraid."

"Yet you are trembling."

"It is this strange gloom, Alan."

Never had the arctic twilight gone more completely. Not half a dozen
times had he seen the phenomenon in all his years on the tundras, where
thunder-storm and the putting out of the summer sun until twilight
thickens into the gloom of near-night is an occurrence so rare that it
is more awesome than the weirdest play of the northern lights. It seemed
to him now that what was happening was a miracle, the play of a mighty
hand opening their way to salvation. An inky wall was shutting out the
world where the glow of the midnight sun should have been. It was
spreading quickly; shadows became part of the gloom, and this gloom
crept in, thickening, drawing nearer, until the tundra was a weird
chaos, neither night nor twilight, challenging vision until eyes
strained futilely to penetrate its mystery.

And as it gathered about them, enveloping them in their own narrowing
circle of vision, Alan was thinking quickly. It had taken him only a
moment to accept the significance of the running figures his companion
had seen. Graham's men were near, had seen them, and were getting
between them and the range. Possibly it was a scouting party, and if
the