red to
think how to feed them, and here they were picking sustenance out of
the frozen snow.

"Rea, will you look at that! Rea, will you look at that!" he kept
repeating. "See, they're hunting, feed."

And the giant, with his rare smile, watched him play with the calves.
They were about two and a half feet high, and resembled long-haired
sheep. The ears and horns were undiscernible, and their color
considerably lighter than that of the matured beasts.

"No sense of fear of man," said the life-student of animals. "But they
shrink from the dogs."

In packing for the journey south, the captives were strapped on the
sleds. This circumstance necessitated a sacrifice of meat and wood,
which brought grave, doubtful shakes of Rea's great head.

Days of hastening over the icy snow, with short hours for sleep and
rest, passed before the hunters awoke to the consciousness that they
were lost. The meat they had packed had gone to feed themselves and the
dogs. Only a few sticks of wood were left.

"Better kill a calf, an' cook meat while we've got little wood left,"
suggested Rea.

"Kill one of my calves? I'd starve first!" cried Jones.

The hungry giant said no more.

They headed southwest. All about them glared the grim monotony of the
arctics. No rock or bush or tree made a welcome mark upon the hoary
plain Wonderland of frost, white marble desert, infinitude of gleaming
silences!

Snow began to fall, making the dogs flounder, obliterating the sun by
which they traveled. They camped to wait for clearing weather. Biscuits
soaked in tea made their meal. At dawn Jones crawled out of the tepee.
The snow had ceased. But where were the dogs? He yelled in alarm. Then
little mounds of white, scattered here and there became animated,
heaved, rocked and rose to dogs. Blankets of snow had been their
covering.

Rea had ceased his "Jackoway out of wood," for a reiterated question:
"Where are the wolves?"

"Lost," replied Jones in hollow humor.

Near the close of that day, in which they had resumed travel, from the
crest of a ridge they descried a long, low, undulating dark line. It
proved to be the forest of "Little sticks," where, with grateful
assurance of fire and of soon finding their old trail, they made camp.

"We've four biscuits left, an' enough tea for one drink each," said
Rea. "I calculate we're two hundred miles from Great Slave Lake. Where
are the wolves?"

At that moment the night wind wafted through the for