Jose removed the bullet from his mouth while he ate, but both he and Blera were careful to sit backing the tallow-candle which Sark placed upon its shelf again, so that their faces were cast in gloom.
Sark, to maintain the part of host, picked up the remainder of the slab of pilot-bread he had carried when he rescued them and poured himself another cup of coffee.
“What might your name be, stranger?” he asked.
Blera started, the piece of moose-shoulder she was munching slipping to the floor.
“Karle Lott!” coughed Jose through the drink he snatched.
“Mine’s Eric Sark.”
Dreading another personal question, Blera bent low by the table-edge to pick up the meat.
But Skookum, the most cunning as well as the most evil of the wolf-dogs, had seen it fall and stolen from behind the stove. He leaped as Blera reached for it and, losing it by the fraction of a second, slashed with his chisel-sharp fangs at her face.
The fangs fell short of the flesh, but met in the parka hood and tore it from her head.
Unmasked, the woman sprang away from the brute with a violent scream.