“It was worth while your being indiscreet for once, seeing that it has brought us out on a night like this,” Miles said, as he crouched low in the sledge, holding on with both thickly mittened hands, for Katherine was driving, and the dogs were going with leaps and bounds, which made the sledge bounce and sway in a very erratic fashion.

“You won’t say the indiscretion was worth while if it turns out that we are the second arrivals and not the first,” Katherine answered.  But her tone was buoyant and hopeful; for she had little doubt about getting to the scene of her father’s accident before Oily Dave and Stee Jenkin had succeeded in locating the spot.

“Wolves! listen to them!” exclaimed Miles, as a hideous yapping and howling sounded across the snowy waste.

“They are a good way off though, and I brought a pair Of Father’s revolvers in case of accident,” Katherine replied, her heart beating a little quicker, although in reality she would much rather have met two or three wolves just then than have encountered Oily Dave and the man who had wanted to buy the Black Crow tobacco.

“I’m glad you thought to bring them,” said Miles.  “Nick Jones told me the wolves are uncommonly hungry for so early in the year, and they are in great numbers too.  He trapped twenty last week.”

“That means twenty less to bother us to-night, which is a great comfort,” she answered, laughing nervously, for the yapping and howling seemed to be coming nearer and nearer.  Then, recognizing a landmark, she cried out joyfully:  “Oh, here is the place, and there hangs the broken snowshoe!”

“What is that?” cried Miles sharply, as a shadowy something slid away out of sight among the trees, a something that was so much like its surroundings as to be hardly distinct from them.

“A wolf.  Look at the dogs.  Mind what you are about, Miles, or they’ll bolt!” she called quickly.  They were both on the ground now, and the boy was trying to hold in the dogs, which were barking, raging, howling, and whining, making a violent uproar, and all striving to get free in order to rush at that something which had slid out of sight among the trees a minute before.

“We must tie them up.  I can’t hold the brutes.  They pull as if they were mad,” said Miles breathlessly, while the dogs struggled and fought, nearly dragging him off his feet, as he tried to keep them from dashing away in pursuit of what they deemed a legitimate quarry.

Katherine swung a rope with a running noose over the head and shoulders of the leader, a huge white dog with a black patch on its back like a saddle.

“There, my fine fellow; now perhaps you will understand that this is not playtime, but a working day extending into the night,” she said, as she patted the great beast in an affectionate manner to show that it was repression, not punishment, which was intended by the tightening of the rope.