Nothing but the cold facts could shake Dell’s count of the chickens.  Joel intentionally delayed the start, loitering between house and corral, and when no longer able to restrain his impulsive brother, together they reached the scene.  Dell’s heart failed him—­not a dead wolf lay in sight.  Every bait had been disturbed.  Some of the troughs had been gnawed to splinters, every trace of the poisoned suet had been licked out of the auger holes, while the snow was littered with wolf tracks.

“Our cunning must be at fault,” remarked Joel, as he surveyed the scene and empty basins.

Dell looked beaten.  “My idea is that we had too few baits for the number of visitors.  See the fur, where they fought over the tallow.  That’s it; there wasn’t enough suet to leave a good taste in each one’s mouth.  From the looks of the ground, there might have been fifty wolves.”

The boy reasoned well.  Experience is a great school.  The brothers awoke to the fact that in the best laid plans of mice and men the unforeseen is ever present.  Their sponsors could only lay down the general rule, and the exceptions threw no foreshadows.  No one could foresee that the grip of winter would concentrate and bring down on the little herd the hungry, roving wolf packs.

“Take out the herd to-day,” said Dell, “and let me break out more running water.  I’ll take these basins in and refill them, make new ones, and to-night we’ll put out fifty baits.”

The cattle were pointed up the new trail to the southern divide.  Joel took the herd, and Dell searched the creek for other shallows tributary to the corral.  Three more were found within easy distance, when the troughs were gathered with fork and sled, and taken home to be refilled.  It was Dell Wells’s busy day.  Cunning and caution were his helpers; slighting nothing, ever crafty on the side of safety, he cut, bored, and charred new basins, to double the original number.  After loading, for fear of any human taint, he dipped the troughs in water and laid them in the shade to freeze.  A second trip with the sled was required to transport the basins up to the corral, the day’s work being barely finished in time for him to assist in penning the herd.

“How many baits have you?” was Joel’s hail.

“Sixty odd.”

“You’ll need them.  Three separate wolf packs lay in sight all the afternoon.  Several times they crept up within one hundred yards of the cattle.  One band numbered upwards of twenty.”

“Let them come,” defiantly said Dell.  “The banquet is spread.  Everything’s done, except to drag the carcass, and I didn’t want to do that until after the cattle were corraled.”

The last detail of the day was to build a little fire, which would die out within an hour after darkness.  It would allow the cattle time to bed down and the packs to gather.  As usual, it was not the intention of the boys to return, and as they mounted their horses to leave, all the welled-up savage in Dell seemed to burst forth.