“Phew!” he whistled to himself, as he noted their disregard of the firelight, “they’re mad with hunger!”
He emptied his pistol into the bunch, and the pack fell back, leaving three of its number dead in the snow. Of the first wolf nothing remained but the skull and tail. Behind the trees the snarling and yelping continued, and as he crept out of his sleeping bag, he conjectured that others of the beasts had been injured by his shots, and were falling a prey to their hungry companions. There was a serious look upon his face, as, crossing to the other side of the fire, he picked up the dead wolves, and one by one flung them into the darkness, where as his ears assured him they also became food for their famished pack-mates.
He had meant to commence his journey at an early hour, but the presence of the wolf-pack forced him to reconsider his plans, and to delay until dawn. The interval he filled in by packing his stores in a convenient form for carrying, and with the aid of things from the sled and his sleeping bag he devised a knapsack, which whilst it bulked large was not really heavy. Then he breakfasted, and that done, as the dawn broke, looked round once more. On one side of him the wolves were still in the shadows of the trees, and as he turned to look on the other, his eye caught the package of poisoned salmon roe, which was still upon the sledge. A thought struck him.
“The very thing!” he muttered, and going to the sled, he broke up the food with an ax and then scattered it in small portions about the camping place.
“I shall bag some of them for certain,” he said, as he saw the wolves watching him. “When they find it they’ll bolt it like one o’clock.”
The day had well broken when, adjusting his snowshoes, he shouldered his pack, and stepped out on the trail. None of the wolves were now in sight, but he had gone only a little way, when a sharp howl behind him, told him that they were still about. He looked back. A little spur of trees on the bank hid his late camp, but as he glanced back, a wolf leaped on the ice, ran howling a short way, then dropped in the snow. Other yelps of pain came from behind the screen of trees, and as the sounds reached him a sigh of satisfaction came in his eyes.
“It’s working like a charm,” he said to himself. “There’s an end of Mr. Wolf for this trip, I fancy.”
As he journed he kept a sharp look out, turning frequently to observe the trail behind him. Not a single wolf appeared, and through the short day he marched on, the solitary living thing in a landscape that was unutterably forlorn and desolate. The quick night drew on, and he decided to camp. Halting in a sheltered cove he felled a small spruce, gathered some dry twigs and built himself a fire, then he thrust his hand to his tunic pocket for matches. They were gone. He had lost them. For a minute or two he was filled with dismay, and real terror clutched at his heart-strings, for to be without means of making a fire in the desolate Northland, is to have entered the valley of the shadow of death.
Then he recalled an old device of the Voyageurs, and proceeded to put it into execution. With his jack knife he cut some thin shavings of spruce, mixed them with a handful of dead lichen scraped from trees, and biting the bullets from a couple of cartridges shook the powder of one over the little heap that he had made, and with that from the other cartridge made a short train. Then he fired his pistol to light the train. The powder caught, spluttered and burned out without lighting the lichen and the pine-shavings, and the operation had to be performed three times before it was successful. He built up his fire, and when it was well going, and he was congratulating himself on his success a thought struck him. Hastily he examined his bandolier. He had but three cartridges left.
As he weighed the metal shells in his hand, his face grew very serious. Each of them carried a message of death, but to him, as his sole means of making a fire, they were to him the bridge of life, and a precarious bridge at that. With at least three camps to make before he reached North Star Lodge, he recognized that the chances were almost desperate, and that only care and skill and a large slice of luck could carry him through. Very carefully he stowed the cartridges where they would be safe against damp or accidental loss, and then proceeded to cook his meal.