upon him like the wind. The pack, whether guided by man or beast,
was driving straight at him, and it was less than a quarter of a
mile away when Philip drew himself up in the spruce. His breath
came quick, and his heart was thumping like a drum, for as he
climbed up the slender refuge that was scarcely larger in diameter
than his arm he remembered the time when he had hung up a thousand
pounds of moose meat on cedars as thick as his leg, and the wolves
had come the next night and gnawed them through as if they had
been paper. From his unsteady perch ten feet off the ground he
stared out into the starlit Barren.

Then came the other sound. It was the swift chug, chug, chug of
galloping feet--of hoofs breaking through the crust of the snow. A
shape loomed up, and Philip knew it was a caribou running for its
life. He drew an easier breath as he saw that the animal was
fleeing parallel with the projecting finger of scrub in which he
had made his camp, and that it would strike the timber a good mile
below him. And now, with a still deeper thrill, he noted the
silence of the pursuing wolves. It meant but one thing. They were
so close on the heels of their prey that they no longer made a
sound. Scarcely had the caribou disappeared when Philip saw the
first of them--gray, swiftly moving shapes, spread out fan-like as
they closed in on two sides for attack, so close that he could
hear the patter of their feet and the blood-curdling whines that
came from between their gaping jaws. There were at least twenty of
them, perhaps thirty, and they were gone with the swiftness of
shadows driven by a gale.

From his uncomfortable position Philip lowered himself to the snow
again. With its three or four hundred yard lead he figured that