the wind and waves had pushed the two edges of the crack 

 up and up until they stood twenty feet above the level. The 

 Lumberman drove along the ice-push, searching for a place 

 where the machine could cross. At last he found a spot 

 where the edges were low, but parted by several feet of open 

 water. The planks were laid down, and on this temporary 

 bridge the car passed safely over. A pole was stuck in the 

 crack to mark the place, and the chase was on. 



The Lumberman spurted to twenty-five miles and headed 

 the wolf off from the shore, turning him out toward the open 

 lake, where the Big Traverse stretches away with its sixteen 

 hundred square miles before the islands begin. The Legis- 

 lator neglected the speedometer now to watch for cracks 

 flush with the surface of the ice, which, the untrained eye 

 would be too slow to see until too late to avoid them. The 

 Lumberman held the wheel hard when the car struck a stretch 

 of glare ice; here the speed was good, but skidding was 

 almost certain. On spots where a slight snow had been fol- 

 lowed by a freeze, the going was rough and the car slowed 

 down. The wolf was making his twenty-two miles an 'hour, 

 gaining a little on the snowy places, where he left faint foot- 

 prints at every leap, but was not hindered for the snow was 

 firm; and losing on the glare ice where he had no good foot- 

 ing. And under wolf and automobile, lay three feet of blue 

 ice, firm and solid. 



Spurt by spurt, the car drew nearer to the wolf. The men 

 tooted the horn fiercely, and shouted themselves hoarse. "Go 

 to it, old boy!" they shouted. "Hit it up! Run, run, run!" 

 And the wolf did his best. On and on they went, ten miles 

 from Springsteel's Island, over the Big Traverse. After the 

 first few miles, the wolf was only thirty feet ahead of the car. 

 The men could hear him pant, and they could have caught him 

 with a lasso if they had had one. One last spurt at twenty- 

 five miles, and they were alongside the wolf and only ten 

 feet from him. The Hardware Man fired, and the wolf dropped. 



They hoisted him up on the mud-guards. He was a big 

 brush-wolf, as large as a full-grown timber-wolf; gray belly, 

 yellowish sides, a gray and yellow back overlaid with black 



11 



