A pause followed after the vanishing of the hated wolverines.  A crow lifted on rounded vans, marking their departure, and it was seen.  A blackcock launched from a high tree with a whir and a bluster like an aeroplane, showing their course, and it was noted.  An eagle climbed heavily and ponderously over the low curtain of the snow mist, pointing their way, and it was followed.  All the wild, all the world, seemed to be against the wolverines.  The brigands were afoot by day.  The scouts were marking their trail.

Then a lynx, moving with great bounds on his huge swathed paws, shot past between the iron-hard tree-boles; a fox followed, scudding like the wind on the frozen crest; a hare, white as a waste wraith, flashed by, swift as a racing white cloud-shadow; a goshawk screamed, and drew a straight streaking line across a glade.  And then came the men, side by side, deadly dumb, with set faces, the pale sun glinting coldly cruel upon the snaky, lean barrels of their slung rifles, moving with steady, fleet, giant strides on their immense spidery ski that were eleven feet long, which whispered ghostily among the silent aisles of Nature’s cathedral of a thousand columns.  The Brothers were on the death-trail of Gulo at last; the terrible, dreaded Brothers, who could overtake a full-grown wolf in under thirty minutes on ski, and whose single bullet spelt certain death.  Now for it; now for the fight.  Now for the great test of the “star” wild outlaw against the “star” human hunters—­at last.  The reindeer were to be avenged.

Then Time took the bit of silence between his teeth and seconds became hours, and minutes generations.

No sound made the wolverines as they rolled along in Indian file, except for the soft whisper of the snow underfoot.

No noise encompassed the Brothers as they sped swiftly side by side over the glittering white carpet, save for the slither of the snow under their weight.

All the wild seemed to be standing still, holding its breath, looking on, spell-bound; and save for the occasional crash of a collapsing snow-laden branch, sounding magnified as in a cave, all the forest about there was as still as death.

Half-an-hour passed, and Gulo flung his head around, glancing over his shoulder a little uneasily, but with never a trace of fear in his bloodshot eyes.  Then he grunted, and the two fell apart silently and instantly, gradually getting farther and farther from each other on a diverging course, till his wife faded out among the trees.  But never for an instant did either of them check that tireless, deceptive, clumsy, rolling slouch, that slid the trees behind, as telegraph-poles slide behind the express carriage window.

Half-an-hour passed, and one of the Brothers, peering up and along the trail a little anxiously, saw the forking of the line ahead.  Then he grunted, and the two promptly separated without a word, gradually increasing the distance between them on the widening fork till they were lost to each other among the marshaled trunks.  But never for an instant did they relax that swift, ghostly glide on the wonderful ski, that slid the snow underfoot as a racing motor spins over the ruts.