They reached the north pass of Sardanes and found it half choked with snow where it always had been bare. It was a comparatively easy matter to sledge up and through it. Halfway up the pass the dogs balked and refused to go forward. Slinking and whining, the brutes skulked in their harness and cowered back against the sides of the sledge, nor would word or whip urge them on.
Hardly less keen than those of the animals themselves, the senses of the son of the snows soon warned him of the danger's nature. He sniffed at the air of the pass and turned smilingly to the scientist.
"A bear," he said, and then, contemptuously; "these dogs are of a poor spirit or we would have to hold them back rather than whip them on. Stay you here and try to quiet them. I will go on and clear the way."
He took a rifle from the sledge and laid down his spear, saying almost apologetically as he did so, "Well would I love to fight him after my old fashion and show you sport, but we haste, and have no time for sports."
Taking off his snowshoes and loosening the knife in his belt, Polaris ran forward around a turn of the rock. Hardly had he disappeared when the air reechoed to a burst of horrid howling, followed by the spitting crack of the rifle.
Polaris found his foe a few rods up the pass, a lean old bear, almost toothless, his once snow-white coat rusted to a dingy yellow, his claws well worn. He was feeling his way cautiously down the snow-covered rocks. With the wind blowing from him, he had no warning of the presence of an enemy until he saw Polaris kneeling scarcely fifteen feet from him. Then he howled indeed. It was his last challenge. A bullet from the powerful rifle, truly aimed, plowed through his shaggy breast and found his heart.
Whipping out his knife, Polaris cut the throat of the huge beast and hacked a piece of flesh from its shoulder. He ran down the path again and threw the bloody fragment before the dogs.
"An old trick," he laughed. "They smell the blood, they taste it, and they fear no more."
Up through the pass the travelers drove their team, past the carcass of the bear, and stood at the lip of the valley slope. Sardanes lay before them. Zenas Wright groaned aloud. Polaris Janess threw wide his arms in a gesture of sorrow, and his face grew solemn with pity.
"Gone," he whispered; "men and women and children, and the wonders they wrought—gone, and the snows have covered all!"