drawn off. Will he
wait out that long Northern night? He has had nothing to eat but the
piece of pemmican. The heavy frost drowsiness will come presently; and
if he falls asleep the fire will go out. An hour's run will carry him
home; but to make speed with the snow-shoes he must run in the open,
exposed to all watchers.

When an Indian balances motives, the motive of hunger invariably
prevails. Pulling up his hood, belting in the caribou coat and kicking
up the dog, the trapper strikes out for the open way leading back to the
line of his traps, and the hollow where the lodges have been built for
shelter against wind. There is another reason for building lodges in a
hollow. Sound of the hunter will not carry to the game; but neither will
sound of the game carry to the hunter.

And if the game should turn hunter and the man turn hunted! The trapper
speeds down the snowy slope, striding, sliding, coasting, vaulting over
hummocks of snow, glissading down the drifts, leaping rather than
running. The frosty air acts as a conductor to sound, and the frost
films come in stings against the face of the man whose eye, ear, and
touch are strained for danger. It is the dog that catches the first
breath of peril, uttering a smothered "_woo! woo!_" The trapper tries to
persuade himself the alarm was only the far scream of a wolf-hunted
lynx; but it comes again, deep and faint, like an echo in a dome. One
glance over his shoulder shows him black forms on the snow-crest against
the sky.

He has been tricked again, and knows how the fox feels before the dogs
in full cry.

The trapper is no longer a man. He is a hunted thing with terror crazing
his blood and the sleuth-hounds of the wilds on his trail. Something
goes wrong with his snow-shoe. Stooping to right the slip-strings, he
sees that the dog's feet have been cut by the snow crust and are
bleeding. It is life for life now; the old, hard, inexorable Mosaic law,
that has no new dispensation in the northern wilderness, and demands
that a beast's life shall not sacrifice a man's.

One blow of his gun and the dog is dead.

The far, faint howl has deepened to a loud, exultant bay. The wolf-pack
are in full cry. The man has rounded the open alley between the trees
and is speeding down the hillside winged with fear. He hears the pack
pause where the dog fell. That gives him respite. The moon is behind,
and the man-shadow flits before on the snow like an enemy heading him
back. The