“loping” across the snow.  As he made for the fish the Leader quietly headed him off, pointed his sharp ears, and just looked the other fellow out of countenance.  Red said things under his breath as he turned away.  The more he thought the situation over the more he felt himself outraged.  He looked round over his shoulder.  There they still were, the stranger holding out the fish, the Leader turning his back on it, but telegraphing Red at the same time not to dare! It was more than dog-flesh could bear; Red bounded back, exploding in snarls.  No sound out of the Leader.  Whether this unnatural calm misled Red, he came up closer, braced his forelegs, and thrust his tawny muzzle almost into the other dog’s face, drew back his lips from all those shining wicked teeth, and uttered a muffled hiss.

Well, it was magnificently done, and it certainly looked as if the Leader was going to have a troubled evening.  But he didn’t seem to think so.  He “fixed” the Red Dog as one knowing the power of the master’s eye to quell.  Red’s reply, unimaginably bold, was, as the Boy described it to the Colonel, “to give the other fella the curse.”  The Boy was proud of Red’s pluck—­already looking upon him as his own—­but he jumped up from his ingratiating attitude, still grasping the dried fish.  It would be a shame if that Leader got chewed up!  And there was Red, every tooth bared, gasping for gore, and with each passing second seeming to throw a deeper damnation into his threat, and to brace himself more firmly for the hurling of the final doom.

At that instant, the stranger breathing quick and hard, the elder children leaning forward, some of the younger drawing back in terror—­if you’ll believe it, the Leader blinked in a bored way, and sat down on the snow.  A question only of last moments now, poor brute! and the bystanders held their breath.  But no!  Red, to be sure, broke into the most awful demonstrations, and nearly burst himself with fury; but he backed away, as though the spectacle offered by the Leader were too disgusting for a decent dog to look at.  He went behind the shack and told the Spotty One.  In no time they were back, approaching the Boy and the fish discreetly from behind.  Such mean tactics roused the Leader’s ire.  He got up and flew at them.  They made it hot for him, but still the Leader seemed to be doing pretty well for himself, when the old Ingalik (whom the Boy had sent a child to summon) hobbled up with a raw-hide whip, and laid it on with a practised hand, separating the combatants, kicking them impartially all round, and speaking injurious words.

“Are your two hurt?” inquired the future owner anxiously.

The old fellow shook his head.

“Fur thick,” was the reassuring answer; and once more the Boy realised that these canine encounters, though frequently ending in death, often look and sound much more awful than they are.