"And—and—" mimicked the husband, "my wife did not wish to leave her skin behind, eh?"
"We find it useful, thou and I; warm too," murmured the wife, drawing the deep-piled pelt around her lover, and burying her own nose in the soft fur. "But it was not for this skin only, but for two others for which I was taking thought—"
"They are not so furry, those two," chuckled Pŭl-Yūn, pinching her.
"It seemed to me," resumed the Master-Girl sedately, "that if it were a war-party of braves, with Good Wolf, too, our chance was bad, unless—"
"Unless someone somehow foiled our line?" whispered the man ponderingly. "But how?"
"That was the question. I went down to their camp and made friends with the first Good Wolf that came up to me. There were others, but they were curled up each with his master, this one was the only watch they had set. I listened, I saw. Then I was for coming away, for ten braves and as many Good Wolf are bad company for one girl. But the getting away again was not easy. Gow-Loo's Good Wolf (I knew him, and he me) was suspicious. He walked around my knees so closely I could hardly move my feet. I could not speak to him for fear of rousing the camp. At last, when he had licked my hands, I got him to let me out and to follow. When I had led him a good way, and he was upon my hatchet-hand, and a little in front of me, I killed him. I had not meant him to have spoken, but the light was bad and he was very quick. It cost me two strokes. The rest thou knows."
Pŭl-Yūn did know that his wife had run a frightful risk, and that once again her foresight and cool courage had brought her through. What he did not know was that she owed her life to the fact that her dead enemy's wolf, or wolf-dog, was still ignorant of the art of barking, and had met the night-comer to his masters' camp in the silent fashion of his wild parents. But, the wonder of it! His inmost heart told him that this adventure would have been beyond him: he would not have risked the certainty of being pulled down by wolves, good or bad, and taken from them by their masters to dree a crueller ending at the stake.
Meanwhile snow fell steadily for a day and a night. The fugitives sate close and contrived to keep themselves warm, but their stock of food, howsoever well husbanded, was running out. Their position was already critical, presently it might be desperate, but they were spared the pangs of indecision or of divided counsels. Both recognised that their very lives depended upon doing nothing. To exhaust their bodily heat by struggling in deep new drift would be madness. And whither?—Their last mark was lost, they knew not north from south whilst the snow continued falling. No, they must sit it out, even if they starved where they sat.
By the evening of the third day the last of the meat was gone. They were huddling in silence, having discussed the question of eating their leggings and moccasins on the morrow, and agreed to refrain.