120 
Northern Trails . Book I 
“Seven,” said Noel, whose eyes already had the cun¬ 
ning of Old Tomah’s to understand everything. 
“ Then where tother wolf ? Only six here,” breathed 
Mooka, looking timidly all around, fearing to find the 
steady glare of green eyes fixed upon them from the 
shadow of every thicket. 
Noel stirred uneasily. Somewhere close at hand 
another huge wolf was waiting; and a wholesome 
fear fell upon him, with a shiver at the thought of 
how near he had come in his excitement to bringing 
the whole savage pack snarling about his ears. 
A snort of alarm cut short his thinking. There at 
the edge of the wood, not twenty feet away, stood a 
caribou, pointing his ears at the children whom he had 
almost stumbled over as he ran, thinking only of the 
wolves behind. The long bow sprang back of itself; 
an arrow buzzed like a wasp and buried itself deep in 
the white chest. Like a flash a second arrow followed 
as the stag turned away, and with a jump or two he 
sank to his knees, as if to rest awhile in the snow. 
But Mooka scarcely saw these things. Her eyes were 
fastened on the great white wolf which she had claimed 
for her own when he was a toddling cub. He lay still 
as a stone under the tip of a bending spruce branch, his 
eyes following every motion of a young bull caribou 
which three of the wolves had singled out of the herd 
and were now guiding surely straight to his hiding-place. 
