times that week he heard the shouts of men--and once he heard a white
man's laughter and the barking of dogs as their master tossed them their
daily feed of fish. In the air he caught the pungent scent of camp-fires
and one night, in the far distance, he heard a wild snatch of song,
followed by the yelping and barking of a dog-pack.

Slowly and surely the lure of man drew him nearer to the post--a mile
to-night, two miles to-morrow, but always nearer. And Gray Wolf,
fighting her losing fight to the end, sensed in the danger-filled air
the nearness of that hour when he would respond to the final call and
she would be left alone.

These were days of activity and excitement at the fur company's post,
the days of accounting, of profit and of pleasure;--the days when the
wilderness poured in its treasure of fur, to be sent a little later to
London and Paris and the capitals of Europe. And this year there was
more than the usual interest in the foregathering of the forest people.
The plague had wrought its terrible havoc, and not until the fur-hunters
had come to answer to the spring roll-call would it be known accurately
who had lived and who had died.

The Chippewans and half-breeds from the south began to arrive first,
with their teams of mongrel curs, picked up along the borders of
civilization. Close after them came the hunters from the western barren
lands, bringing with them loads of white fox and caribou skins, and an
army of big-footed, long-legged Mackenzie hounds that pulled like horses
and wailed like whipped puppies when the huskies and Eskimo dogs set
upon them. Packs of fierce Labrador dogs, never vanquished except by
death, came from close to Hudson's Bay. Team after team of little yellow
and gray Eskimo dogs, as quick with their fangs as were their black and