“If you think we have a chance to get out of here, Toma, we’ll try it,” Dick grimly returned a moment later. “Anything but this suspense suits me.”
As the boys packed up the wolves grew more uneasy and shifted closer. Toma scarcely could manage the husky as he hitched it to the sled. The young guide held his rifle in one hand, working at a disadvantage so that he might be prepared to shoot at a moment’s notice. Toma’s was the only rifle left in which there was ammunition, and Dick had shot away all the revolver cartridges during the night.
It was with many misgivings that a few minutes later they took their places for the dash through the wolves.
Toma took the lead, with the rifle, Sandy held the dog, while Dick took up the rear, swinging the camp axe.
Slowly, in grim silence, they pulled away from the fire.
A hundred feet away they discovered they never would get through the circle. For, instead of retreating, the wolves dashed this way and that, then rushed them in a body. Sandy’s cry of terror was drowned by the crack of Toma’s rifle and Dick’s hoarse shout:
“Back to the fire! We can’t make it!”
Then Toma’s rifle was empty, and with clubbed rifle and axe they were left to fight their way back to the campfire. Slashing with razor fangs, the wolves leaped in and out. Dick wrought havoc with the axe, and Toma ploughed his way through the snarling, writhing mass like a Hercules. When the guide broke through he ran to the fire and commenced throwing coals and burning sticks with his mittens, until the air was filled with flying embers. Howls of pain followed as the hot coals burned the wolves. The scent of singed hair and burning flesh arose.
At last the wolves drew off reluctantly, leaving behind them a trail of wounded and dying. In the repulsion of the attack the boys had slain nine wolves and wounded seven. They could see the hairy bodies of the dead lying scattered all the way from where the fight had begun.
“Wood not last much longer,” Toma’s voice startled Dick.