had saved and brought along for the purpose.
When all were thus prepared he carried them about a quarter of a mile
from camp, and there dropped them at short intervals in a great circle
about it. He knew the dogs would not stray that far, since their
experience of the night before, and so felt pretty certain that the
traps would only find their way to the destination for which they were
intended.

The first blood-chilling howl was heard soon after dark, and a few
minutes later it was apparent that wolves were again gathering from all
quarters. Then the anxious watchers caught occasional glimpses of dim
forms and sometimes of a pair of gleaming eyes, that invariably drew a
shot from Phil's rifle. Still, the wolves seemed to remember their
lesson, or else they waited for the occupants of the camp to fall
asleep, for they made no effort at an attack.

As time passed, the wolf tones began to change, and defiant howlings to
give place to yelps and yells of distress. Soon other sounds were
mingled with these--the fierce snarlings of savage beasts fighting over
their prey. The traps were doing their work. Those wolves that had
eagerly gulped them down were so stricken with deadly pains that they
staggered, fell, and rolled in the snow. At the first symptoms of
distress others sprang upon them and tore them to pieces, at the same
time battling fiercely over their cannibal feast. So wolf fed wolf,
while the night echoed with their hideous outcries, until finally the
survivors, gorged with the flesh of their own kind, slunk away, and
after some hours of bedlam quiet once more reigned in the forest.

So Phil's scheme proved a success, and for the remainder of that night
he and his companions slept in peace. At daylight they visited the
scenes of wolfish feasting, and found everywhere plentiful evidence of
what had taken place; but this time they gathered in neither rugs nor
robes, for only blood stains and bones remained.

For another week did the sledge party journey down the several streams
that, emptying one into another, finally formed the Conehill River, or,
as the gold-diggers call it, Forty Mile Creek, because its mouth is
forty miles down the Yukon from the old trading-post of Fort Reliance.
As the first half of their long journey drew toward a close they became
anxious as to its results and impatient for its end. When would they
reach the settlement? and could they get there before their rivals who
had followed the Yu