"Father and I are to stay here—?"
"What else can you do?" He went back to his traces and drew the sled one hundred yards farther. He didn't seem to see the gaunt wolf that backed off into the shadows as he approached. He refused to notice that the pack seemed to be steadily growing bolder. Human hunters usually had guns that could blast and destroy from a distance; but even an animal intelligence could perceive that these three seemed to be without this means of inflicting death. A wolf is ever so much more intelligent than a crow,—yet a crow shows little fear of an unarmed man and is wholly unapproachable by a boy with a gun. The ugly truth was simply that in their increasing madness and excitement and hunger, they were becoming less and less fearful of these three strange humans with the sled.
It was not a good place for a camp. They worked a long time before they cleared a little patch of ground of its snow mantle. Dan cut a number of saplings—laboriously with his ax—and built a fire with the comparatively dry core of a dead tree. True, it was feeble and flickering, but as good as could be hoped for, considering the difficulties under which he worked. The dead logs under the snow were soaked with water from the rains and the thaws. The green wood that he cut smoked without blazing.
"No more time to be lost," Dan told Snowbird. "It lies in your hands to keep the fire burning. And don't leave the circle of the firelight without that pistol in your hand."
"You don't mean," she asked, unbelieving, "that you are going to go out there to fight Cranston—unarmed?"
"Of course, Snowbird. You must keep the pistol."
"But it means death; that's all it means. What chance would you have against a man with a rifle? And as soon as you get away from this fire, the wolves will tear you to pieces."
"And what would you and your father do, if I took it? You can't get him into a tree. You can't build a big enough fire to frighten them. Please don't even talk about this matter, Snowbird. My mind's made up. I think the pack will stay here. They usually—God knows how—know who is helpless and who isn't. Maybe with the gun, you will be able to save your lives."
"What's the chance of that?"
"You might—with one cartridge—kill one of the devils; and the others—but you know how they devour their own dead. That might break their famine enough so that they'd hold off until I can get back. That's the prize I'm playing for."