"I pardon your ignorance concerning many matters of this Northland, for
you are a young man and have travelled little; but, at the same time, I
am inclined to agree with you on one thing. The mammoth no longer
exists. How do I know? I killed the last one with my own right arm."

Thus spake Nimrod, the mighty Hunter. I threw a stick of firewood at the
dogs and bade them quit their unholy howling, and waited. Undoubtedly
this liar of singular felicity would open his mouth and requite me for my
St. Elias bear.

"It was this way," he at last began, after the appropriate silence had
intervened. "I was in camp one day--"

"Where?" I interrupted.

He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the north-east, where
stretched a _terra incognita_ into which vastness few men have strayed
and fewer emerged. "I was in camp one day with Klooch. Klooch was as
handsome a little _kamooks_ as ever whined betwixt the traces or shoved
nose into a camp kettle. Her father was a full-blood Malemute from
Russian Pastilik on Bering Sea, and I bred her, and with understanding,
out of a clean-legged bitch of the Hudson Bay stock. I tell you, O man,
she was a corker combination. And now, on this day I have in mind, she
was brought to pup through a pure wild wolf of the woods--grey, and long
of limb, with big lungs and no end of staying powers. Say! Was there
ever the like? It was a new breed of dog I had started, and I could look
forward to big things.

"As I have said, she was brought neatly to pup, and safely delivered. I