"Wolves! the Gray Hunters! the Murder Brothers who go in packs!" he said, as his quick-feeling nose picked their presence from the North Wind. "Not Rof's Pack," he continued, sampling the scent a little finer--"Strangers!" and he watched warily, cocking his ears forward for a warning whimper.
"Huh! they're busy!" for as he flashed over their cross-trail there arose the fainter odour of Caribou. "Safe journey, cousin," he muttered, "and confusion to the Throat-cutters. It's the Meat-eating, the Blood-drinking," he philosophized, "that breeds all the enmity in the Boundaries. There are Grasses, and Leaves, and Flowers enough for all, and no encroachment, if we'd only stick to it; but eating one's Comrades is what makes the trouble."
Just before daylight Mooswa stopped, climbed up a sloping bank warily, and ate a light breakfast; then slipped back to the river-bed, huddled up in the lee of a clay-cut, and after resting for two hours pushed on again. Another ten miles and he stopped like a flash, holding his head straight up wind, the coarse, strong-growing hairs over his withers vibrating with intensity. "Sniff! sniff! Dogs! Man! Rof said nothing of Dogs. This makes it more complicated. It is the scent of White Men, and the Dog-smell is not that of Huskies. These Whites sometimes bring the long-legged creatures that follow us like Wolves."
He worked cautiously down the river till his eyes caught sight of a blue smoke-feather floating lazily upward.
Five or six short steps at a time, three or four yards he moved,--then stopped and watched with eyes, ears, nose, and all his full sensibility. He knew the Man-trick of a flank movement--he must get them out on the river behind him; besides, there was now the stronger, more certain odour of Dogs.
He was perhaps a matter of half a mile from the little Shack above which twisted the spiral curl of smoke, when a fierce, strong-throated "Yap! yap! Whe-e-e, yap!" cut the frosty air.
"I thought so," Mooswa muttered. "I know that breed--the fierce-fanged ones the Scotch Factor had at Fort Resolution--from his own Boundaries across the sea they came. They are like the Men themselves--on, on, rush and hold. Deep-chested, small-gutted as Caribou; with long legs that carry them over the snow like those of my own family; gray-haired and strong-jawed, like Blue Wolf: but weak in the feet--small-footed, with hair between their toes which balls up in the snow and makes them go lame." Then Mooswa considered the task he had undertaken.
"If the Man slips the Dogs, and the snow keeps hard and dry, there will be more fighting than running," he said to himself, "for these brutes will come faster than I care to go. But there is a strong crust, strong enough to bear me, and if the sun warms the snow so that it will ball in the haired toes, then I'll have a chance in the run. The Man moves," he continued, whiffing at the air. "Two of them!" he muttered, as their forms outlined against the morning sky; "Rof brought tidings of but one. Now for it! I'm coming, Boy!"
He turned and walked slowly back on his track, breaking into a shuffling trot farther on.
In a few minutes the two men, snow-shoe clad, rifle in hand, and cartridge-belted, reappeared circling through the woods on the bank. With one of them were four Scotch Stag-hounds in leash. Mooswa's eyes took in the situation as he trotted, carrying his head a little to one side. "The flank movement," he muttered, "and a stolen shot at the next bend--they'll not slip the Dogs while they have hope of a shot."