When David and Andy moved the wolves followed. With every step they gradually but perceptibly drew a little closer. When the outline of the tilt appeared through the thickening twilight the animals were not ten yards behind the nervous, frightened boys. David, glancing back, could see the bristling hair above the powerful shoulders, and the ugly red lolling muzzles of the beasts.
“Get in quick and light th’ candle, Andy!” he directed when at last they reached the door. “Hurry, now! They’re like t’ rush any minute!”
Snow had drifted against the door and clogged it, and it seemed to David that Andy would never get it open. The wolves were edging closer—closer—closer. They were not twenty feet away when at last the doorway was cleared and Andy sprang into the tilt, shouting to David to hurry, while he nervously lighted the candle.
In momentary fear of being charged by the pack and torn to bits, David had stood facing the wolves as they edged in, inch by inch. Andy’s shout, and the flare of the candle within the tilt brought assurance of safety, and with his face still to the wolves he backed into the door, drawing the toboggan after him.
“Come, Andy, now, help me pull her! Help me pull her!” David shouted, tugging with frenzied energy at the loaded and unwieldly toboggan.
Lashed upon the toboggan were their sleeping bags and two of the finest martens they had captured during the winter. If he abandoned it, David was well aware that the wolves would destroy everything it contained, and with never a thought that the wolves would be so bold as to attempt to follow him and Andy into the tilt, he determined also to save their belongings.
Andy sprang to his assistance, and the two boys pulled with all their strength, but as they might well have known, the toboggan was quite too long for the narrow tilt, and when they had drawn it in as far as they could, an end still blocked the doorway, and they could not close the door.
Then it was that the heads of two wolves, ravenous, and grown exceeding bold, fearless even of the candle light, appeared at the entrance, determined, it was apparent, to make an attack, whether or no.
David, in desperation, instinctively seized his rifle, threw it to his shoulder, with the muzzle almost touching the leading wolf, and pulled the trigger.
There was an explosion, a snarl, and the wolf fell at David’s feet. The frozen firing pin was at last released. With lightning speed he threw forward and drew back the lever, and fired again, and the other wolf fell. Stooping low, with the rifle still at his shoulder, he discovered the three other wolves slinking in the twilight just outside the door, and again his rifle rang death to a wolf, But this was to be his last victim, for the two remaining animals turned, and faded in the gathering gloom.