“Blocked!” she cried. “And just when I was hoping for so much!”
Sinking down upon the snow, she gave herself over for a moment to hopeless despair. The next moment she was on her feet. With arms outstretched toward the stars as if in appeal for aid, she spoke through tight clenched teeth:
“We must! We will! We will win!”
As if in mockery of her high resolves, at that moment there came to her ears the long-drawn howl of a timber wolf.
The call of the wolf was answered by another, and yet another. At the moment they seemed some distance away, but Marian trembled at the sound.
“A wolf travels fast,” she told herself as she turned to hurry back to Patsy and her faithful Eskimo.
“Listen!” she exclaimed, as she came near to her companions. “Sounds like ten or twelve of them howling at once. Terogloona, do wolves travel in packs?”
“Mebby not,” the Eskimo shrugged his shoulders, “but often they are many. Then they call to one another. They come all to one place. Then there’s trouble. There will be trouble to-night, and we have no rifle. We—”
He broke off abruptly to lean forward in a listening attitude. “That is strange,” he murmured, “They have found some prey back there where they are, perhaps a caribou.”
As they stood at strained attention, it became evident to all that the creature being pursued was coming down the wind toward them. The yap-yap of the wolves, now in full pursuit, grew momentarily louder. At the beginning they had seemed two miles away. Now they seemed but one mile; a half mile. The girls fairly held their breaths as they watched and waited.