Luka shook his head. "Bears are asleep, Godfrey; they are hunted in summer, and sometimes they may be found in the early part of the winter, but never when the snow is deep; they would die of hunger. There might be wolves, but we don't want them. Wolf skins fetch very little, and their flesh is only good for the dogs; we don't want wolves, but we must be on our guard. In such weather as this food is very scarce. They might come and attack us. Yesterday I heard howls once or twice. I think when we have done breakfast it will be better to take that meat down below."
"Why, they wouldn't smell it as much as this cooked meat, Luka."
"No, I was not thinking of that, but if they come we may want it."
"You mean they might besiege us, Luka?"
"Yes, shut us up here. Wolves very patient; wait a long time when they scent food."
"Well, we will have the dogs sleep up here for the future. They will act as sentries, and there is none too much air down there. That reminds me, I will cut a long pole or two, fasten them together, and try and drive them down through the snow to the roof of the shelter below."
Luka shook his head. "You might drive it down five or six feet, but you would never get it down to the roof, and if you did you could never pull it up again."
"I don't know, Luka. I once saw them driving down some bars in tough clay when they were making a railway cutting at home. I think we might do it in the same way."
Godfrey after breakfast cut a pole, chopping it off just below where two or three small branches had shot from it, leaving a bulge. This bulge he shaped and smoothed very carefully with his knife, so that it was in the form of a peg-top.
"There," he said. "You see it is thicker here than it is anywhere else, so that the hole it makes will be a little larger than the pole itself, and instead of the snow holding the pole all the way down it will touch it only on this shoulder."