“A new trail!” breathed Wabi.  “A new trail, and a hot one!  Listen!  They make no sound.  It is always that way when they are close to a kill!”

As they looked the last of the wolves disappeared in the forest.  For a few moments there was silence, then a chorus of howls came from deep in the woods behind them.

“Now is our chance,” cried the Indian.  “They’ve broken again, and their game—­”

He had partly slipped from his limb, withdrawing his supporting arm from Rod’s waist, and was about to descend to the ground when the pack again turned in their direction.  A heavy crashing in the underbrush not a dozen rods away sent Wabi in a hurried scramble for his perch.

“Quick—­higher up!” he warned excitedly.  “They’re coming out here—­right under us!  If we can get up so that they can’t see us, or smell us—­”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when a huge shadowy bulk rushed past them not more than fifty feet from the spruce in which they had sought refuge.  Both of the boys recognized it as a bull moose, though it did not occur to either of them that it was the same animal at which Wabi had taken a long shot that same day a couple of miles back.  In close pursuit came the ravenous pack.  Their heads hung close to the bloody trail, hungry, snarling cries coming from between their gaping jaws, they swept across the little opening almost at the young hunters’ feet.  It was a sight which Rod had never expected to see, and one which held even the more experienced Wabi fascinated.  Not a sound fell from either of the youths’ lips as they stared down upon the fierce, hungry outlaws of the wilderness.  To Wabi this near view of the pack told a fateful story; to Rod it meant nothing more than the tragedy about to be enacted before his eyes.  The Indian’s keen vision saw in the white moonlight long, thin bodies, starved almost to skin and bone; to his companion the onrushing pack seemed filled only with agile, powerful beasts, maddened to almost fiendish exertions by the nearness of their prey.

In a flash they were gone, but in that moment of their passing there was painted a picture to endure a lifetime in the memory of Roderick Drew.  And it was to be followed by one even more tragic, even more thrilling.  To the dazed, half-fainting young hunter it seemed but another instant before the pack overhauled the old bull.  He saw the doomed monster turn, in the stillness heard the snapping of jaws, the snarling of hunger-crazed animals, and a sound that might have been a great, heaving moan or a dying bellow.  In Wabi’s veins the blood danced with the excitement that stirred his forefathers to battle.  Not a line of the tragedy that was being enacted before his eyes escaped this native son of the wilderness.  It was a magnificent fight!  He knew that the old bull would die by inches in the one-sided duel, and that when it was over there would be more than one carcass for the survivors to gorge themselves upon.  Quietly he reached up and touched his companion.