"I swear it!" repeated Pierre.

Something that was almost eagerness was burning now in Philip's
face. He leaned over the table, his hands gripping tightly. He was
thirty-five; almost slim as Pierre himself, with eyes as steely
blue as Pierre's were black. There was a time, away back, when he
wore a dress suit as no other man in the big western city where he
lived; now the sleeves of his caribou skin coat were frayed and
torn, his hands were knotted, in his face were the lines of storm
and wind.

"It is impossible," he said. "Bram Johnson is dead!"

"He is alive, M'sieu."

In Pierre's voice there was a strange tremble.

"If I had only HEARD, if I had not SEEN, you might disbelieve,
M'sieu," he cried, his eyes glowing with a dark fire. "Yes, I
heard the cry of the pack first, and I went to the door, and
opened it, and stood there listening and looking out into the
night. UGH! they went near. I could hear the hoofs of the caribou.
And then I heard a great cry, a voice that rose above the howl of
the wolves like the voice of ten men, and I knew that Bram Johnson
was on the trail of meat. MON DIEU--yes--he is alive. And that is
not all. No. No. That is not all--"

His fingers were twitching. For the third or fourth time in the
last three-quarters of an hour Raine saw him fighting back a