The hunter grabbed his rifle and looked where Jack pointed. At once he seemed relieved.
"The wolves," he said. "They know their way out of this valley. I don't want to travel on this ice any longer than I can help."
With a word to the professor, and taking Roebach with him, the old hunter made a determined charge into the brush at the lurking wolves. The pack scattered at first, but finding themselves determinedly followed, and both hunters having been wise enough to take torches with them (for wolves are very much afraid of fire) the pack finally gathered once more and trailed away up a narrow path upon the rocky wall close at hand.
In the white light furnished by the earth-planet Andy counted thirty and more of the beasts climbing this rugged path. He was sure it was no mere lair they went to among the rocks, but a path leading out of the valley altogether. Therefore, when the party was again refreshed, they took up their line of march, in single file, following the wolf trail.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE FIGHT AT ALEUKAN
Phineas Roebach knew nothing about this narrow defile through which the party traveled. But he agreed that they were breaking through the wall of the glacier on the right side. Aleukan, the big native settlement, was in this direction.
There seemed to be a narrow crack through this cliff which had guarded the river of ice. It had never been used by man as a right of way, but the beasts of the wilderness had used it from time immemorial, as the marks along the way proclaimed.
The scurrying feet of the wolf pack, were long since out of the way.
But yonder a mountain sheep had been killed by a puma, or other big
feline, and the wolves had picked its bones after the Master of the
Chase had eaten his fill.
Where a little rill of sweet water sprang from between two boulders, boiling out white sand from the depths of its spring, was the print of a bear's paw. Many of these marks Jack and Mark saw for themselves; but Andy was quick to point them out as he led the way up the steep path.