LITTLE BULL OF THE BARRENS 189 



cow. He drew his furs well about him and 

 dozed off to sleep, knowing that the moment 

 the fire began to get dangerously low an 

 unfailing instinct would bid him awake to 

 tend it. 



While he slept, the storm drove unrelenting 

 over the place of his retreat, and kept heap- 

 ing the thin dry snow in fringes and wreaths 

 upon the shaggy, lowering fronts of the 

 musk-ox phalanx. From time to time, a 

 massive head would shake off the burden, and 

 emerge black and menacing. And always, 

 with unwavering vigilance, the army of 

 angry eyes and short sharp horns confronted 

 the group of discontented wolves. 



Now, as it chanced, the trapper was wrong 

 in his assumption as to the wolves. The 

 truth which would have made a great 

 difference in his calculations had he known 

 it was that they had been cautiously trailing 

 him ever since he left his hut. But they 

 knew something of man, those wolves, and 

 they feared him. They were not yet quite 

 mad with hunger, so they had not yet quite 

 plucked up courage to reveal themselves to 

 him, still less to commit themselves to an 

 open attack. They dreaded his eye, they 

 dreaded his sharp, authoritative voice, They 

 dreaded the strange, menacing smell of him. 



