and far away—­it might have been sounded for some other hunting.  She would make the woods, take off her webs, climb up into a tree and, perhaps, attracted by those four shots—­no, three, she must save one—­some trapper, some unimaginable wanderer in the winter forest, would come to her and rescue her before the end.  So her mind twisted itself with hope.  But, an hour later, with the pines not very far away, the baying rose so close behind that it stopped her heart.  Twenty minutes had passed when above a rise of ground she saw the shaggy, trotting black-gray body of Brenda, the leader of the pack.  She was running slowly, her nose close to the snow, casting a little right and left over the tracks.  Sheila counted eight—­Berg, then, had joined them.  She thought that she could distinguish him in the rear.  It was now late afternoon, and the sun slanted driving back the shadows of the nearing trees, of Sheila, of the dogs.  It all seemed fantastic—­the weird beauty of the scene, the weird horror of it.  Sheila reckoned the distance before her, reckoned the speed of the dogs.  She knew now that there was no hope.  Ahead of her rose a sharp, sudden slope—­she could never make it.  There came to her quite suddenly, like a gift, a complete release from fear.  She stopped and wheeled.  It seemed that the brutes had not yet seen her.  They were nose down at the scent.  One by one they vanished in a little dip of ground, one by one they reappeared, two yards away.  Sheila pulled out her gun, deliberately aimed and fired.

A spurt of snow showed that she had aimed short.  But the loud, sudden report made Brenda swerve.  All the dogs stopped and slunk together circling, their haunches lowered.  Wreck squatted, threw up his head, and howled.  Sheila spoke to them, clear and loud, her young voice ringing out into that loneliness.

“You Berg!  Good dog!  Come here.”

One of the shaggy animals moved toward her timidly, looking back, pausing.  Brenda snarled.

“Berg, come here, boy!”

Sheila patted her knee.  At this the big dog whined, cringed, and began to swarm up the slope toward her on his belly.  His eyes shifted, the struggle of his mind was pitifully visible—­pack-law, pack-power, the wolf-heart and the wolf-belly, and against them that queer hunger for the love and the touch of man.  Sheila could not tell if it were hunger or loyalty that was creeping up to her in the body of the beast.  She kept her gun leveled on him.  When he had come to within two feet of her, he paused.  Then, from behind him rose the starved baying of his brothers.  Sheila looked up.  They were bounding toward her, all wolf these—­but more dangerous after their taste of human blood than wolves—­to the bristling hair along their backs and the bared fangs.  Again she fired.  This time she struck Wreck’s paw.  He lifted it and howled.  She fired again.  Brenda snapped sideways at her shoulder, but was not checked.  There was one shot left.  Sheila knew how it must be used.  Quickly she turned the muzzle up toward her own head.