“He’s not hurt!” exclaimed the driver, “see the dogs!  He’s been running—­running until he dropped in his tracks!”

The assurance brought but little comfort to Rod.  He could feel the tremble of returning life in Wabi’s body now, but the sight of the exhausted and bleeding dogs and the memory of his comrade’s last words had filled him with a new and terrible fear.  What had happened to Minnetaki?  Why had the factor’s son come all this distance for him?  Why had he pursued the mail until his dogs were nearly dead, and he himself had fallen unconscious in his tracks?  Was Minnetaki dead?  Had the Woongas killed Wabi’s beautiful little sister?

Again and again he implored his friend to speak to him, until the courier pushed him back and carried Wabi to the mail sled.

“Hustle up there to that bunch of spruce and build a fire,” he commanded.  “We’ve got to get something hot into him, and rub him down, and roll him in furs.  This is bad enough, bad enough!”

Rod waited to hear no more, but ran to the clump of spruce to which the courier had directed him.  Among them he found a number of birch trees, and stripping off an armful of bark he had a fire blazing upon the snow by the time the dog mail drew up with its unconscious burden.  While the driver was loosening Wabi’s clothes and bundling him in heavy bearskins Rod added dry limbs to the fire until it threw a warm glow for a dozen paces around.  Within a few minutes a pot of ice and snow was melting over the flames and the courier was opening a can of condensed soup.

The deathly pallor had gone from Wabi’s face, and Rod, kneeling close beside him, was rejoiced to see the breath coming more and more regularly from between his lips.  But even as he rejoiced the other fear grew heavier at his heart.  What had happened to Minnetaki?  He found himself repeating the question again and again as he watched Wabi slowly returning to life, and, so quickly that it had passed in a minute or two, there flashed through his mind a vision of all that had happened the last few months.  For a few moments, as his mind traveled back, he was again in Detroit with his widowed mother; he thought of the day he had first met Wabigoon, the son of an English factor and a beautiful Indian princess, who had come far down into civilization to be educated; of the friendship that had followed, of their weeks and months together in school, and then of those joyous days and nights in which they had planned a winter of thrilling adventure at Wabi’s home in the far North.

And what adventures there had been, when, as the Wolf Hunters, he and Wabi and Mukoki had braved the perils of the frozen solitudes!  As Wabigoon’s breath came more and more regularly he thought of that wonderful canoe trip from the last bit of civilization up into the wilds; of his first sight of moose, the first bear he had killed, and of his meeting with Minnetaki.