when this trip's over."

"What d'ye mean by that?" Bill demanded.

"I mean that this load of ourn is gettin' on your nerves, an' that you're
beginnin' to see things."

"I thought of that," Bill answered gravely. "An' so, when I saw it run
off across the snow, I looked in the snow an' saw its tracks. Then I
counted the dogs an' there was still six of 'em. The tracks is there in
the snow now. D'ye want to look at 'em? I'll show 'em to you."

Henry did not reply, but munched on in silence, until, the meal finished,
he topped it with a final cup of coffee. He wiped his mouth with the
back of his hand and said:

"Then you're thinkin' as it was--"

A long wailing cry, fiercely sad, from somewhere in the darkness, had
interrupted him. He stopped to listen to it, then he finished his
sentence with a wave of his hand toward the sound of the cry, "--one of
them?"

Bill nodded. "I'd a blame sight sooner think that than anything else.
You noticed yourself the row the dogs made."

Cry after cry, and answering cries, were turning the silence into a
bedlam. From every side the cries arose, and the dogs betrayed their
fear by huddling together and so close to the fire that their hair was
scorched by the heat. Bill threw on more wood, before lighting his pipe.