They made no sound as they tore, compact as a Zulu impi, over the spotless white, because they had no trail to follow, only this huge devil of a leader; and they had their work cut out to follow him, for he was the longest-legged male wolf any of them had ever set eyes upon.

Straight as a twelve-inch shell the white wolf headed back to the fallen trees and the bear’s den.  When he reached them, he stopped so abruptly that the wolves behind him almost sat on their haunches in the effort to pull up.  Those that failed fell sideways under a rain of wicked snaps from him, that followed one another quick as the stutter of a machine-gun.

The pack did not stop—­at least, not the flanks of it.  They swept on without a pause, out and round, like flood-water round a knoll, joined at the far side, and—­were still.  As a maneuver, a military maneuver, swift, unexpected, faultless, and silent, it was perfect.

For as long as a man takes to light a pipe there was dead silence, broken only by the quick motor-like panting of the pack.  And one hundred and twenty-nine pairs of eyes regarded the fallen trees.

Then the white wolf, all alone, with hackles up, stepped forward and leaped upon the trunk of the tree that was poised upon its fellow.  He ran lightly up it till he was exactly above the hollow formed by the junction of the two trees, then stopped, looking down.

Half-a-dozen of the older and more cunning wolves followed him; the pack surged forward until both trees became lined with a row of wolves, without breaking the circle of the main pack outside, and then stopped.  All this in silence.

Then—­but you could almost hear the trees breathe while he did it—­the white wolf yawned very deliberately, and whined, insolently and very audibly.

The answer was instant.

Something rumbled within the den, deep down, like a geyser.

The white wolf whined again, and sprang aside just as the bear, maddened with the pain of a .450-caliber rifle bullet in his stomach, and seeking a sacrifice, hurled out of the dark and up over the tree-trunk, striking, with appalling nail-strokes, right and left; and the quickness of those strokes was only a less astonishment than the agility of the wolves getting out of the way of them.  But—­but he had come out to abolish one wolf, that bear; not one hundred and twenty-nine.

The white wolf dropped without a sound upon the bear’s great, broad back.  The half-dozen old wolves followed him like figures moved by a single lever.  The pack sucked in with the rush of a waterspout.  The bear vanished under a wave of fangs and tails, as a sinking boat vanishes beneath the billows.  And the rest was the most diabolical devils’ riot that ears ever heard.

The bear unwounded, even if he had been induced to come out at all, might have fought his way home again; but the bear wounded and cut off was a different matter.  He battled as only a cornered bear can battle; but the exertion of it gave the .450 bullet its chance, and he died—­horribly—­as they die who are pulled down by the starving wolf-pack, and that is not printable at all.