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“You’re bothering too much, Bill. Just shut up now, and go to sleep. You have a stomach ache, that’s what’s bothering you.”

The men slept, breathing heavily, side by side, under the one covering. The fire died down, and the gleaming eyes drew closer. The dogs kept together in fear. Once their noise became so loud that Bill woke up. He got out of bed carefully and threw more wood on the fire. The circle of eyes drew back. He glanced at the dogs, then rubbed his eyes and looked at them again. Then he crawled back into the blankets.

“Henry,” he said. “Oh, Henry.”

Henry groaned, “What’s wrong now?”

“Nothing, only there’s seven of them again. I just counted.”

Henry grunted again and fell asleep.

In the morning it was he who awoke first and woke up his companion. It was still dark, though it was already six o’clock; and Henry started preparing breakfast, while Bill rolled the blankets and made the sled ready.

“Say, Henry,” he asked suddenly, “how many dogs did you say we had?”

“Six.”

“Wrong,” Bill said triumphantly.

“Seven again?”

“No, five; one’s gone.”

“The hell!” Henry cried in anger, left the cooking and went to count the dogs.

“You’re right, Bill,” he concluded. “Fatty’s gone. They just swallowed him alive, damn them!”

“He always was a fool dog.”

“But not fool enough to commit suicide. I bet none of the others would do it.”

“Couldn’t drive them away from the fire with a club,” Bill agreed. “I always thought there was something wrong with Fatty anyway.”

And this was the epitaph of a dead dog on the Northland trail, and it was longer than the epitaphs of many other dogs, many other men.

Chapter II. The She-Wolf

After breakfast the men set off again. Fiercely sad cries called through the darkness to one another and answered back. Daylight came at nine o’clock. At midday the sky to the south warmed to rose-colour, but it soon faded. After the grey light of day faded as well, the Arctic night descended upon the land.

As darkness came, the hunting-cries around them drew closer – so close that the dogs had occasional periods of panic. It was getting on men’s nerves.

Henry was cooking supper when he heard the sound of a blow, an exclamation from Bill, and a cry of pain from dogs. He straightened up in time to see a dim silhouette running into the dark. Then he saw Bill, standing among the dogs, in one hand a club, in the other the tail and part of the body of a salmon.

“I got half of it,” he announced; “but it got the other half. Did you hear it squeal?”

“What did it look like?”

“Couldn’t see. But it had four legs and a mouth and hair and looked like any dog.”

“Must be a tame wolf, I reckon.”

“Damn! It must be tame, whatever it is, if it is coming here at feeding time.”

That night, when supper was finished and they sat on the oblong box and smoked, the circle of gleaming eyes drew in even closer than before.

“I wish they’d go away and leave us alone,” Bill said.

For a quarter of an hour they sat on in silence, Henry staring at the fire, and Bill at the circle of eyes that burned in the darkness.