"Never before so," she smiled.

"You mean you never drove a reindeer?"

"Before now, no. Hungry you?" The Jap girl smiled, as if to say, "Enough
about that, let's eat."

It was a royal meal they ate together, those two there beneath the
Arctic moon. This Jap girl was a wonder, Johnny felt that, and he was to
learn it more certainly as the days passed.

Three days later he sat upon a robe of deer skin. The corners of the
robe were drawn up over his shoulders. A shelter of deer skins and
walrus skins, hastily improvised by him during the beginning of a
terrible blizzard which came howling down from the north, was ample to
keep the wind from driving the biting snow into their faces, but it
could hardly keep out the cold. In spite of that, the Jap girl, buried
in deer skins, with her back against his, was sleeping soundly. Johnny
was sleeping bolt upright with one ear awake. His reindeer were picketed
close to the improvised igloo. Other nights, they had taken turns
watching to protect them from prowling wolves, but this night no one
could long withstand the numbing cold of the blizzard. So he watched and
half slept. Now he caught the rising howl of the wind, and now felt its
lull as the deer skins sagged. But what was this? Was there a different
note, a howl that was not of the wind?

Shaking himself into entire wakefulness, Johnny sat bolt upright and
listened intently. Yes, there it was again. A wolf beyond doubt, as yet
some distance away, but coming toward them with the wind.