As time passed, the wolf tones began to change, and defiant howlings to give place to yelps and yells of distress. Soon other sounds were mingled with these--the fierce snarlings of savage beasts fighting over their prey. The traps were doing their work. Those wolves that had eagerly gulped them down were so stricken with deadly pains that they staggered, fell, and rolled in the snow. At the first symptoms of distress others sprang upon them and tore them to pieces, at the same time battling fiercely over their cannibal feast. So wolf fed wolf, while the night echoed with their hideous outcries, until finally the survivors, gorged with the flesh of their own kind, slunk away, and after some hours of bedlam quiet once more reigned in the forest. So Phil's scheme proved a success, and for the remainder of that night he and his companions slept in peace. At daylight they visited the scenes of wolfish feasting, and found everywhere plentiful evidence of what had taken place; but this time they gathered in neither rugs nor robes, for only blood stains and bones remained. For another week did the sledge party journey down the several streams that, emptying one into another, finally formed the Conehill River, or, as the gold-diggers call it, Forty Mile Creek, because its mouth is forty miles down the Yukon from the old trading-post of Fort Reliance. As the first half of their long journey drew toward a close they became anxious as to its results and impatient for its end. When would they reach the settlement? and could they get there before their rivals who had followed the Yukon? were the two questions that they constantly asked of each other, but which none could answer. Phil grew almost despondent as he reflected upon the length of time since they left old Fort Adams, and gave it as his opinion that the other party must have reached Forty Mile, long since. Jalap Coombs was firm in his belief that the other party was still far away, and that his would be the first in; for, quoth he: "Luck allers has been on my side, and I'm going to believe it allers will be. My old friend Kite Roberson useter say, speaking of luck, and he give it as his own experience, that them as struck the best kinds of luck was them as worked the hardest for it, and ef they didn't get it one way they was sure to another. Likewise he useter say, Kite did, consarning worriments, that ef ye didn't pay no attention to one 'twould be mighty apt to pass ye by; but ef ye encouraged it by so much as a wink or a nod ye'd have to fight it to git red of it. So, as they hain't no worriments hove in sight, what's the use in s'arching for 'em?" As for Kurilla, whenever his opinion was asked, he always grinned, and returned the same answer: "You come pretty quick, mebbe. Yaas."