“I didn’t think you would play this trick on me, Muky,” he said, a flush of embarrassment gathering in his brown face.  “It’s awfully good of you, and all that, but I wish you wouldn’t treat me as if I were a child any longer, old friend!”

He placed his hand affectionately upon the kneeling Mukoki’s shoulder, and the old hunter looked up at him with a happy, satisfied grin on his weather-beaten visage, wrinkled and of the texture of leather by nearly fifty years of life in the wilderness.  It was Mukoki who had first carried the baby Wabi about the woods upon his shoulders; it was he who had played with him, cared for him, and taught him in the ways of the wild in early childhood, and it was he who had missed him most, with little Minnetaki, when he went away to school.  All the love in the grim old redskin’s heart was for the Indian youth and his sister, and to them Mukoki was a second father, a silent, watchful guardian and comrade.  This one loving touch of Wabi’s hand was ample reward for the long night’s duty, and his pleasure expressed itself in two or three low chuckling grunts.

“Had heap bad day,” he replied.  “Very much tired.  Me feel good—­better than sleep!” He rose to his feet and handed Wabi the long fork with which he manipulated the meat on the spits.  “You can tend to that,” he added.  “I go see traps.”

Rod, who had awakened and overheard these last remarks, called out from the shack: 

“Wait a minute, Mukoki.  I’m going with you.  If you’ve got a wolf, I want to see him.”

“Got one sure ’nuff,” grinned the old Indian.

In a few minutes Rod came out, fully dressed and with a much healthier color in his face than when he went to bed the preceding night.  He stood before the fire, stretched one arm then the other, gave a slight grimace of pain, and informed his anxious comrades that he seemed to be as well as ever, except that his arm and side were very sore.

Walking slowly, that Rod might “find himself,” as Wabi expressed it, the two went up the river.  It was a dull gray morning and occasionally large flakes of snow fell, giving evidence that before the day was far advanced another storm would set in.  Mukoki’s traps were not more than an eighth of a mile from camp, and as the two rounded a certain bend in the river the old hunter suddenly stopped with a huge grant of satisfaction.  Following the direction in which he pointed Rod saw a dark object lying in the snow a short distance away.

“That’s heem!” exclaimed the Indian.

As they approached, the object became animate, pulling and tearing in the snow as though in the agonies of death.  A few moments more and they were close up to the captive.

“She wolf!” explained Mukoki.