not so
strong a cache as he would have desired to make, but he had done his
best. To hoist the meat to the top was heart-breaking. The larger pieces
defied him until he passed the rope over a limb above, and, with one end
fast to a piece of meat, put all his weight on the other end.

Once in the tent, he proceeded to indulge in a prolonged and solitary
orgy. He did not need friends. His stomach and he were company. Slice
after slice and many slices of meat he fried and ate. He ate pounds of
the meat. He brewed real tea, and brewed it strong. He brewed the last
he had. It did not matter. On the morrow he would be buying tea in
Minto. When it seemed he could eat no more, he smoked. He smoked all his
stock of dried tea leaves. What of it? On the morrow he would be smoking
tobacco. He knocked out his pipe, fried a final slice, and went to bed.
He had eaten so much he seemed bursting, yet he got out of his blankets
and had just one more mouthful of meat.

In the morning he awoke as from the sleep of death. In his ears were
strange sounds. He did not know where he was, and looked about him
stupidly until he caught sight of the frying-pan with the last piece of
meat in it, partly eaten. Then he remembered all, and with a quick start
turned his attention to the strange sounds. He sprang from the blankets
with an oath. His scurvy-ravaged legs gave under him and he winced with
the pain. He proceeded more slowly to put on his moccasins and leave
the tent.

From the cache up the hillside arose a confused noise of snapping and
snarling, punctuated by occasional short, sharp yelps. He increased his
speed at much expense of pain, and cried loudly and threateningly. He
saw the wolves hurrying away through the snow and underbrush, many of
them, and he saw the scaffold down on the ground. The animals were heavy
with the meat they had eaten, and they were content to slink away and
leave the wreckage.

The way of the disaster was clear to him. The wolves had scented his
cache. One of them had leapt from the trunk of the fallen tree to the
top of the cache. He could see marks of the brute's paws in the snow
that covered the trunk. He had not dreamt a wolf could leap so far. A
second had followed the first, and a third and fourth, until the flimsy
scaffold had gone down under their weight and movement.

His eyes were hard and savage for a moment as he contemplated the extent
of the calamity; then the old look of patience returned into