The plain looked flat, but was gently undulating, like some gigantic ocean petrified; so that, in due time, the pack, still giving tongue wildly and terribly, saw before them, far, far ahead, a procession of dots straggling along over the endless, unbroken white.  And instantly their music shut off as if at the wave of an invisible hand.

Then, as the quarry ran from scent to view, they raced.  All their long, loose, nickel-steel-limbed, tireless gallop before had been nothing to their flying speed now.  The taint of the blood of the slaughtered game from the chase was in their sensitive nostrils.  It was like the sight of rare wines to a drunkard.  Shift!  Say, but the way those long-legged demons ate up the distance between them and their prey was awe-inspiring.  It was uncanny.  It was almost magic.  It was awful.

Then things happened, as you might say, with some rapidity.

Three shots rang out in the silence—­three shots in quick succession.  They were fired at the wolves by the only man in the group who had an efficient rifle, but were really meant to recall the sleighs with the sportsmen and the rifles, which had gone on.

The wolves spread out into a long line; the ends of the line crept forward swiftly on either hand, and the whole pack raced to the attack in the formation of a Zulu impi—­in the shape of a pair of horns, that is.  When the points of the horns got on the far side of their “prey,” they rushed together, and turned inwards, still at full gallop.

At this juncture the sleighs came back—­at the gallop, too.  Four .450-caliber Express rifle bullets, one .375-caliber magazine and one .315-caliber magazine bullet, arriving among the wolves in quick succession produced no confusion.  Not a wolf stopped.  Each beast continued its tireless gallop, swerving and dispersing as it raced, and without uttering a sound, till, almost before you could realize what had happened at all, there was a dwindling crescent of gray specks in the background, and four or five other gray shapes—­two kicking—­lying about in the foreground.

But—­and this is where we come in—­neither there in the distant snow-haze nor close in by the crowding hunting-party was the white wolf.

He had been last on view far in advance of, and heading, the point of the right-hand horn of the swiftly encircling pack—­his usual place, by the way—­but from the moment the returning sleighs hove in sight, and the bar-like gleam of the moonlight could be seen upon the ready rifle-barrels—­he had seen that, too, and knew its meaning—­he had been—­nowhere.

Now, before the encircling horns of the pack closed round, one of the pack-horses, maddened with fear, had stampeded and got clear away.  That horse was galloping now madly across the plain, hidden from view by a gentle swell of ground, and—­the white wolf was racing alongside of it; and away behind—­for few could keep up with the tremendous speed of the white wolf—­another, and an ordinary gray wolf was gliding in their tracks.  That was a female wolf, who more than once before had found it a profitable investment to keep her eye upon the doings of the great white leader.