He gripped the ax he had brought with him and approached within a few feet of the crouching animal.  Rod could see that one of the big steel traps had caught the wolf on the forward leg and that the other had buried its teeth in one of the hind legs.  Thus held the doomed animal could make little effort to protect itself and crouched in sullen quiet, its white fangs gleaming in a noiseless, defiant snarl, its eyes shining with pain and anger, and with only its thin starved body, which jerked and trembled as the Indian came nearer, betraying signs of fear.  To Rod it might have been a pitiful sight had not there come to him a thought of the preceding night and of his own and Wabi’s narrow escape from the pack.

Two or three quick blows of the ax and the wolf was dead.  With a skill which can only be found among those of his own race, Mukoki drew his knife, cut deftly around the wolf’s head just below the ears, and with one downward, one upward, and two sidewise jerks tore off the scalp.

Suddenly, without giving a thought to his speech, there shot from Rod,

“Is that the way you scalp people?”

Mukoki looked up, his jaw fell—­and then he gave the nearest thing to a real laugh that Rod ever heard come from between his lips.  When Mukoki laughed it was usually in a half-chuckle, a half-gurgle—­something that neither Rod nor Wabi could have imitated if they had tried steadily for a month.

“Never scalped white people,” the old Indian shot back.  “Father did when—­young man.  Did great scalp business!”

Mukoki had not done chuckling to himself even when they reached camp.

Scarcely ten minutes were taken in eating breakfast.  Snow was already beginning to fall, and if the hunters took up their trail at once their tracks would undoubtedly be entirely obliterated by midday, which was the best possible thing that could happen for them in the Woonga country.  On the other hand, Wabi was anxious to follow back over the wolf-trail before the snow shut it in.  There was no danger of their becoming separated and lost, for it was agreed that Rod and Mukoki should travel straight up the frozen river.  Wabi would overtake them before nightfall.

Arming himself with his rifle, revolver, knife, and a keen-edged belt-ax, the Indian boy lost no time in leaving camp.  A quarter of an hour later Wabi came out cautiously on the end of the lake where had occurred the unequal duel between the old bull moose and the wolves.  A single glance told him what the outcome of that duel had been.  Twenty rods out upon the snow he saw parts of a great skeleton, and a huge pair of antlers.