When they reached the inland valley they were both spent in strength.  In sheer relief from the agonized suspense of the journey they sank on their sledges and lay palpitating for an hour or more.  But the cold froze their perspiring garments and they had to rise and exercise so as not to freeze to death.  Ootah knew that no time could be lost.  In the interior mountains the breathing of the hill spirits was becoming more uneasy.  And Ootah noted with anxiety the increasing moderation of the atmosphere.  That was not well.  When the cold relented the hill spirits released the glaciers.

With frantic eagerness they explored the valley.  The green grass whereon Ootah had seen the splendid animals grazing months before was covered with ice.  There was no sign of the ahmingmah.  Ootah’s heart sank.  He felt very much like weeping.

Suddenly the dogs began to sniff the air and bark hungrily.

“Ahmingmah!” Koolotah cried, joyfully.

Ootah released the team—­the dogs made a misty black streak in their dash over the ice.  The men followed.

In the shelter of a cave they found five musk oxen.  They were huddled together and half numb with cold.  They roared dully as the howling dogs assaulted them, and rushed lumberingly from the cave into the moonlight.  Five great black hulks, with mighty manes of coarse hair, they ambled over the ice for a space of five hundred feet and then, surrounded by the dogs, assembled in a circle, their backs together, their heads facing the howling dogs.  Thus they were prepared to protect themselves from attack.

The dogs, frantic with hunger, made fierce rushes at the animals.  Now and then, as the dogs dashed forward, one of the great beasts would charge, its head lowered, and the dogs would leap backward into the air and scatter.  Then turning, the animal would rush back to its companions as fast as its numbed legs could carry it.

Through the white vapor of their breath, which half hid their great horned heads, Ootah could see the eyes of the musk-oxen—­they were greenish and phosphorescent.  Occasionally the creatures roared sullenly, but the fight was less exciting than it would have been had they been less torpid from hunger and cold.

Ootah called away the dogs, and raised his gun, one which Olafaksoah, in payment for the five sledloads of walrus blubber which he confiscated after Ootah’s flight to the mountains, had left with a generous supply of ammunition with a companion.  Ootah now realized the value of the payment which he had scorned.

There was a yellow flash in the moonlight—­a mighty roar went up.  The dogs, with a cyclonic dash, swooped upon the fallen monster, snapping viciously at it as it roared in its death agony.  Frightened, the other four scattered—­one rushed into the shelter of the cave, the other three, dispersing, soon became diminishing black specks in the moonlight.  The dogs would have followed, but Ootah called them back.  One animal was even more than they could manage.