“Well, we saw nine men go bounding off away from the reindeer, and we accounted for Lupo. That makes ten, and it doesn’t seem likely there were more. Yet there is the bare possibility that out there in the grass may be one or more badly wounded men, fellows whom we shot at one time or another, who were too hard hit to escape. If there are any such, we can’t go off and leave them there to die. I wouldn’t treat a dog like that.”
“They’re not dogs,” muttered Farnum, bitterly. “They’re wolves.”
“Mr. Farnum considers we would be taking too great a risk,” Mr. Hampton continued. “He says that if we go out to search for wounded, we are likely to be shot for our pains.”
“Oh, surely not by a wounded man whom you were going to help,” protested Jack.
“You don’t know them,” said Farnum.
“Well, just the same,” said Jack, “I think Dad is right. It would be shameful for us to go away without investigating.”
“I’d feel like a murderer,” said Bob. “Shooting ’em down in a fight is one thing. It was their lives or ours. But leaving a wounded man to die in the wilderness is something entirely different.”
Farnum made a gesture of surrender.
“I guess I seem hard-hearted,” he said. “But you don’t know what I’ve been through in the past. All right, we’ll make a search. But I warn you to be on guard.”
“Hardly likely after all that there are any wounded out there,” remarked Frank, taking part in the discussion for the first time. “They must have been in hiding right in the path of the reindeer, and you can’t see any forms there now. If there were any too badly wounded to escape, they’d also have been too badly wounded to drag themselves to the side.”