Seventeen of them he counted--seventeen murderous, ill-visaged curs of the savage kill! And the leader of the pack was a very demon wolf. A monstrous female, almost pure white, huge, misshapen, hideous--the ultimate harridan of the wolf-breed--she stood a full two hands above the tallest of the rank and file of her evil clan. The foot and half of a foreleg had been left between iron jaws where she had gnawed herself out of a trap, and the shrunken stub, depending from a withered shoulder, dragged over the surface of the snow, leaving a curious mark like the trail of a snake. The remaining foreleg was strong and thick and, from redistribution of balance, slanted inward from the massive shoulder, which was developed out of all proportion to its mate, giving the great white brute a repulsive, lopsided appearance. The long, stiff hair stood out upon her neck in a great ruff, which accentuated the fiendish ferocity of her, adding a hyena-like slope to her ungainly body. But it was in the expression of her face that she reached the climax of hideous malevolence. One pointed ear stood erect upon her head, while the other, mangled and torn into a serried red excrescence, formed the termination of a broad, ragged scar which began at the corner of her mouth, giving her face the expression of a fiendish grin that belied the green glare of her venomous, opalescent eyes. The loss of the leg seemed in nowise to hamper her freedom of action. She moved ceaselessly among the pack with a peculiar bounding gallop, fawning in subtle cajolery upon those in the forefront, slashing right and left among the laggards with vicious clicks of her long, white fangs; and always she watched the tiring man who found his own gaze fixed upon her in horrid fascination. There was something sinister in the wolf-pack's noiseless pursuit. The brutes drew nearer as the man's pace slowed to the wearying of his muscles. Instinctively he knew that at the last there would be no waiting--no delay. The very minute he sank exhausted into the snow they would be upon him--the great white leader and her rapacious horde--and in his imagination he could feel the viselike clench of iron jaws and the tearing rip with which the quivering flesh would be stripped from his bones. At midday the man placed the sheath-knife in his belt and threw away the pack. Relieved of the burden, his shoulders felt strangely light. There was a new buoyancy in his stride. But the relief was temporary, and as the sun sank early behind the pines his brain was again driving his wearied muscles to their work. The wolves were following close in now, and the silence of their relentless persistence filled the man with a dumb terror which no pandemonium of howling could have inspired. His advance was halting. Each step was a separate and conscious undertaking, and it was with difficulty that he lifted his moccasins clear of the snow.