Dick’s hands clenched on the strap with which he was helping pull the sled. “Makes no difference, Sandy. After we’ve escaped all these human wolves that have been after us, I guess we can handle the animals all right.” But he was not quite so sure as he tried to make Sandy believe.
“Wolves eat um dead dogs back trail,” Toma called from the rear of the sled, where he was following up after a stiff job of breaking trail.
All afternoon the cries of the gathering pack could be heard, now near, now far. Once it seemed they were all around them. Then the boys redoubled their efforts on the heavy sled.
“We ought to pull into that cabin the corporal mentioned before long,” Dick said worriedly, as he changed places with Sandy.
“I don’t know about that,” Sandy replied. “The corporal was probably estimating the distance if we made time with a good dog team—but we haven’t gone more than five miles today.”
They made no stop for a mid-day meal, chewing raw bacon while toiling on the trail. The fear of the wolves had entered their hearts yet they would not let one another feel that fear by any spoken word.
Near nightfall they were certain the wolves were trailing them, and they could not hide it from one another. Far in the rear they could hear the hunting cry of the pack, and it was blood-curdling.
While the sun still shone over the western skyline, the first of the wolf pack appeared behind, and the boys knew that they were in for trouble.
The leader of the wolves was old and wise. For a time he held the pack of nearly thirty gaunt, gray wolves out of rifle range, waiting for dark. But hunger could not be denied. The less wise of the pack forged ahead, and the rifles of the three boys spoke with deadly effect.
Dick’s toll was three wolves before he emptied his magazine. Sandy shot one and thought he had killed another, but the animal seemed only stunned, and after a minute leaped up and came on again at a swinging lope, to be dropped by a shot from Dick, who had reloaded.
Toma did not fire, however. Instead, without any orders from Dick or Sandy, he made camp in a patch of scrub pine and spruce, where there was plenty of dead wood. Speedily he made a fire. When Dick and Sandy had exhausted their ammunition, and had gone for Corporal Richardson’s revolver, a huge fire was roaring and crackling before the upturned sled, in whose shelter rested the corporal.