From the edge of the spruce forest a young Indian now ran out upon the surface of the lake.  His breath was coming quickly, but with excitement rather than fatigue.  Behind him, less than half a mile away, he could hear the rapidly approaching cry of the hunt-pack, and for an instant he bent his lithe form close to the snow, measuring with the acuteness of his race the distance of the pursuers.  Then he looked for his white companion, and failed to see the motionless blot that marked where the other had fallen.  A look of alarm shot into his eyes, and resting his rifle between his knees he placed his hands, trumpet fashion, to his mouth and gave a signal call which, on a still night like this, carried for a mile.

“Wa-hoo-o-o-o-o-o!  Wa-hoo-o-o-o-o-o!”

At that cry the exhausted boy in the snow staggered to his feet, and with an answering shout which came but faintly to the ears of the Indian, resumed his flight across the lake.  Two or three minutes later Wabi came up beside him.

“Can you make it, Rod?” he cried.

The other made an effort to answer, but his reply was hardly more than a gasp.  Before Wabi could reach out to support him he had lost his little remaining strength and fallen for a second time into the snow.

“I’m afraid—­I—­can’t do it—­Wabi,” he whispered.  “I’m—­bushed—­”

The young Indian dropped his rifle and knelt beside the wounded boy, supporting his head against his own heaving shoulders.

“It’s only a little farther, Rod,” he urged.  “We can make it, and take to a tree.  We ought to have taken to a tree back there, but I didn’t know that you were so far gone; and there was a good chance to make camp, with three cartridges left for the open lake.”

“Only three!”

“That’s all, but I ought to make two of them count in this light.  Here, take hold of my shoulders!  Quick!”

He doubled himself like a jack-knife in front of his half-prostrate companion.  From behind them there came a sudden chorus of the wolves, louder and clearer than before.

“They’ve hit the open and we’ll have them on the lake inside of two minutes,” he cried.  “Give me your arms, Rod!  There!  Can you hold the gun?”

He straightened himself, staggering under the other’s weight, and set off on a half-trot for the distant tamaracks.  Every muscle in his powerful young body was strained to its utmost tension.  Even more fully than his helpless burden did he realize the peril at their backs.

Three minutes, four minutes more, and then—­

A terrible picture burned in Wabi’s brain, a picture he had carried from boyhood of another child, torn and mangled before his very eyes by these outlaws of the North, and he shuddered.  Unless he sped those three remaining bullets true, unless that rim of tamaracks was reached in time, he knew what their fate would be.  There flashed into his mind one last resource.  He might drop his wounded companion