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c?y-:- 



prowling fox, were the records of wolves' 

 cautious feet ; and that they were no longer 

 if^?cS^^ beating the thickets for grouse and rab- 

 bits, but moving swiftly all together for the 

 edges of the vast barrens where the caribou 

 herds were feeding. Another glance — but 

 here we must have the cunning eyes of Old 

 Tomah the hunter — would' have told that 

 two of the trails were those of enormous 

 wolves which led the pack; two others were 

 plainly cubs that had not yet lost the cub 

 trick of frolicking in the soft snow; while 

 three others were just wolves, big and power- 

 ful brutes that moved as if on steel springs, 

 and that still held to the old pack because 

 the time had not yet come for them to scatter 

 finally to their separate ways and head new 

 packs of their own in the great solitudes. 



Out from the woods on the other side of 

 the barren came two snow-shoe trails, which 

 advanced with short steps and rested lightly 

 on the snow, as if the makers of the trails 

 were little people whose weight on the snow- 

 shoes made * a hardly more im- 

 pression than (y[^ *\Jj the broad pads of 





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