Then he saw them.  They were sweeping like dark and swiftly moving shadows between him and the forest.  Suddenly they stopped, and for a few moments no sound came from them as they packed themselves closely on the scent of his fresh trail in the snow.  And then they surged in his direction; this time there was a still fiercer madness in the wild cry that rose from their throats.  In a dozen seconds they were at the mound.  They swept around it and past it, all save one—­a huge gray brute who shot up the hillock straight at the prey the others had not yet seen.  There was a snarl in Miki’s throat as he came.  Once more he was facing the thrill of a great fight.  Once more the blood ran suddenly hot in his veins, and fear was driven from him as the wind drives smoke from a fire.  If Neewa were only there now, to fend at his back while he fought in front!  He stood up on his feet.  He met the up-rushing pack-brute head to head.  Their jaws clashed, and the wild wolf found jaws at last that crunched through his own as if they had been whelp’s bone, and he rolled and twisted back to the plain in a dying agony.  But not until another gray form had come to fill his place.  Into the throat of this second Miki drove his fangs as the wolf came over the crest.  It was the slashing, sabre-like stroke of the north-dog, and the throat of the wolf was torn open and the blood poured out as if emptied by the blade of a knife.  Down he plunged to join the first, and in that instant the pack swept up and over Miki, and he was smothered under the mass of their bodies.  Had two or three attacked him at once he would have died as quickly as the first two of his enemies had come to their end.  Numbers saved him in the first rush.  On the level of the plain he would have been torn into pieces like a bit of cloth, but on the space at the top of the Kopje, no larger than the top of a table, he was lost for a few seconds under the snarling and rending horde of his enemies.  Fangs intended for him sank into other wolf-flesh; the madness of the pack became a blind rage, and the assault upon Miki turned into a slaughter of the wolves themselves.  On his back, held down by the weight of bodies, Miki drove his fangs again and again into flesh.  A pair of jaws seized him in the groin, and a shock of agony swept through him.  It was a death-grip, sinking steadily into his vitals.  Just in time another pair of jaws seized the wolf who held him, and the hold in his groin gave way.  In that moment Miki felt himself plunging down the steep side of the knoll, and after him came a half of what was left alive of the pack.

The fighting devils in Miki’s brain gave way all at once to that cunning of the fox which had served him even more than claw and fang in times of great danger.  Scarcely had he reached the plain before he was on his feet, and no sooner had he touched his feet than he was off like the wind in direction of the river.  He had gained a fifty-yard start before the first of the wolves discovered his flight.  There were only eight that followed him now.  Of the thirteen mad beasts five were dead or dying at the foot of the hillock.  Of these Miki had slain two.  The others had fallen at the fangs of their own brethren.