SNOW-SHOES AND SLEDGES.
BY KIRK MUNROE.
CHAPTER XIX.
A BATTLE WITH WOLVES.
The remainder of the journey up the Tananah was uneventful, but so long that the new year was well begun ere the sledge party left it and turned up the Gheesah branch, which flows in from the east. An Indian guide, procured at the last village by the promise of a pound of tobacco for his services, accompanied them on their four days' journey up this river, and to the summit of the bleak wind-swept divide, five hundred feet above timberline. This gave the dogs a hard pull, though Jalap Coombs insisted upon lightening their load by walking; nor from this time on would he again consent to be treated as an invalid.
The summit once passed, they plunged rapidly down its farther side and into the welcome shelter of timber fringing a tiny stream, whose course they were now to follow. Their guide called it the Tukh-loo-ga-ne-lukh-nough, which, after vain attempts to remember, Phil shortened to "Tough Enough." Jalap Coombs, however, declared that this was not a "sarcumstance" to the names of certain down-East streams among which he was born, and to prove his assertion began to talk glibly of the Misquabenish, the Keejimkoopic, the Kashagawigamog, the Kahwcambejewagamog, and others of like brevity, until Phil begged him to take a rest.
That night, while the camp was buried in the profound slumber that followed a day of unusually hard work, and the fire had burned to a bed of coals, the single long-drawn howl of a wolf was borne to it with startling distinctness by the night wind. As though it were a signal, it was answered from a dozen different directions at once. The alert dogs sprang from their snowy beds with bristling crests and hurled back a challenge of fierce barkings; but this, being an incident of nightly occurrence, failed to arouse the tired sleepers.
Within a few minutes the dread howlings had so increased in volume that they seemed to issue from scores of savage throats and to completely encircle the little camp. If was as if all the wolves of the forest, rendered desperate by famine, had combined for a raid on the supper of provisions so kindly placed within their reach. Nearer and nearer they came, until their dark forms could be seen like shadows of evil omen flitting among the trees and across the open moonlit spaces.