ift, unexpected, faultless, and silent, it was perfect.

For as long as a man takes to light a pipe there was dead silence,
broken only by the quick motor-like panting of the pack. And one
hundred and twenty-nine pairs of eyes regarded the fallen trees.

Then the white wolf, all alone, with hackles up, stepped forward and
leaped upon the trunk of the tree that was poised upon its fellow. He
ran lightly up it till he was exactly above the hollow formed by the
junction of the two trees, then stopped, looking down.

Half-a-dozen of the older and more cunning wolves followed him; the
pack surged forward until both trees became lined with a row of wolves,
without breaking the circle of the main pack outside, and then stopped.
All this in silence.

Then--but you could almost hear the trees breathe while he did it--the
white wolf yawned very deliberately, and whined, insolently and very
audibly.

The answer was instant.

Something rumbled within the den, deep down, like a geyser.

The white wolf whined again, and sprang aside just as the bear,
maddened with the pain of a .450-caliber rifle bullet in his stomach,
and seeking a sacrifice, hurled out of the dark and up over the
tree-trunk, striking, with appalling nail-strokes, right and left; and
the quickness of those strokes was only a less astonishment than the
agility of the wolves getting out of the way of them. But--but he had
come out to abolish one wolf, that bear; not one hundred and
twenty-nine.

The white wolf dropped without a sound upon the bear's great, broad
back. The half-dozen old wolves followed him like figures moved by a
single lever. The pack sucked in with the rush of a waterspout. The
bear vanished under a wave of fangs and tails, as a sinking boat
vanishes beneath the billows. And the rest was the most diabolical
devils' riot that ears ever heard.

The bear unwounded, even if he had been induced to come out at all,
might have fought his way home again; but the bear wounded and cut off
was a different matter. He battled as only a cornered bear can battle;
but the exertion of it gave the .450 bullet its chance, and he
died--horribly--as they die who are pulled down by the starving
wolf-pack, and that is not printable at all.

He took three wolves--smashed-in-heads and chests--with him to the
other world, that bear, and left three others well on the road there.
_All six_ followed him by the path he had gone when the pack had done
with hi