“What is the matter with him?” asked Jean.
“Listen!” Disengaging their ears from the noise of travel, they suddenly heard a sound behind them, deep and faint as from a hunting dog in distant cover. McTavish paused a moment to look behind, and on the snow where it touched the forest they had left, descried a dark, moving mass, with dark specks flanking it to either side. Again, to them came the faint sound, an echo thrown from the resonant face of the woods.
“Wolves!” cried Donald, sharply. “And on our trail! Run, Jean, as you have never run before. If we can make cover, we're safe... Mistisi, mush on, you fiend, or I'll break your back!”
But the dog needed no bidding—he had sensed the danger long since. His swift trot broke into a lumbering lope.
The man swiftly took in the situation. They were in the middle of the snow-plain. There is but one defense against wolves—fire, and here there was no wood of any sort. Only one course was open to them, to go on. Their breath steamed back into their faces in clouds; the slide and crunch of snow-shoes, and the creaking of the sledge sounded under foot. The sun had dropped below the horizon, and the early darkness had come swiftly marching down from the north, bringing in its train the fickle, inconstant beauty of the aurora. Great streamers of color shot silently from horizon to zenith, and flickered with eerie dimness across the white gleam of the snow.
But Donald did not see these things. In his ears was but one sound, the baying of the wolf-pack on the hunt. He could almost see them come, red tongues slavering between white fangs, gray shoulders rising and falling in uneven rhythm, great, gray brushes flowing straight out behind... He looked back. They had gained; they traveled almost two feet to his one. Yet, if there were no accident it was possible he could reach the forest.
“Damnation!”
Crying to Jean to go on, he halted and stooped over his snowshoes, the slip-strings of which had loosened. In a minute, he was up again and off, sliding, leaping from hummock to hummock, glissading down the little inclines, speeding like a winged Mercury of the North. How he could run, if alone! In five minutes, he caught the dog and Jean, and accommodated his pace to theirs.
Now, the forest was a bare half-mile ahead, the pack but a half-mile behind. The baying was near now, loud, exultant, terrifying. Perhaps, the huge leader had sighted the swiftly flying figures on the snow.
“Donald! I can't go a step farther. Go on, and leave me!”