“Nothing more than you have told me yourself.”

“Well, once in a great while Mukoki has—­not exactly a fit, but a little mad spell!  I have never determined to my own satisfaction whether he is really out of his head or not.  Sometimes I think he is and sometimes I think he is not.  But the Indians at the Post believe that at certain times he goes crazy over wolves.”

“Wolves!” exclaimed Rod.

“Yes, wolves.  And he has good reason.  A good many years ago, just about when you and I were born, Mukoki had a wife and child.  My mother and others at the Post say that he was especially gone over the kid.  He wouldn’t hunt like other Indians, but would spend whole days at his shack playing with it and teaching it to do things; and when he did go hunting he would often tote it on his back, even when it wasn’t much more than a squalling papoose.  He was the happiest Indian at the Post, and one of the poorest.  One day Mukoki came to the Post with a little bundle of fur, and most of the things he got in exchange for it, mother says, were for the kid.  He reached the store at night and expected to leave for home the next noon, which would bring him to his camp before dark.  But something delayed him and he didn’t get started until the morning after.  Meanwhile, late in the afternoon of the day when he was to have been home, his wife bundled up the kid and they set out to meet him.  Well—­”

A weird howl from the captive wolf interrupted Wabi for a moment.

“Well, they went on and on, and of course did not meet him.  And then, the people at the Post say, the mother must have slipped and hurt herself.  Anyway, when Mukoki came over the trail the next day he found them half eaten by wolves.  From that day on Mukoki was a different Indian.  He became the greatest wolf hunter in all these regions.  Soon after the tragedy he came to the Post to live and since then he has not left Minnetaki and me.  Once in a great while when the night is just right, when the moon is shining and it is bitter cold, Mukoki seems to go a little mad.  He calls this a ‘wolf night.’  No one can stop him from going out; no one can get him to talk; he will allow no one to accompany him when in such a mood.  He will walk miles and miles to-night.  But he will come back.  And when he returns he will be as sane as you and I, and if you ask him where he has been he will say that he went out to see if he could get a shot at something.”

Rod had listened in rapt attention.  To him, as Wabi proceeded with his story of the tragedy in Mukoki’s life, the old Indian was transformed into another being.  No longer was he a mere savage reclaimed a little from the wilderness.  There had sprung up in Rod’s breast a great, human, throbbing sympathy for him, and in the dim candle-glow his eyes glistened with a dampness which he made no attempt to conceal.

“What does Mukoki mean by ’wolf night’?” he asked.