It was not a good place for a camp. They worked a long time before they cleared a little patch of ground of its snow mantle. Dan cut a number of saplings--laboriously with his ax--and built a fire with the comparatively dry core of a dead tree. True, it was feeble and flickering, but as good as could be hoped for, considering the difficulties under which he worked. The dead logs under the snow were soaked with water from the rains and the thaws. The green wood that he cut smoked without blazing. "No more time to be lost," Dan told Snowbird. "It lies in your hands to keep the fire burning. And don't leave the circle of the firelight without that pistol in your hand." "You don't mean," she asked, unbelieving, "that you are going to go out there to fight Cranston--unarmed?" "Of course, Snowbird. You must keep the pistol." "But it means death; that's all it means. What chance would you have against a man with a rifle? And as soon as you get away from this fire, the wolves will tear you to pieces." "And what would you and your father do, if I took it? You can't get him into a tree. You can't build a big enough fire to frighten them. Please don't even talk about this matter, Snowbird. My mind's made up. I think the pack will stay here. They usually--God knows how--know who is helpless and who isn't. Maybe with the gun, you will be able to save your lives." "What's the chance of that?" "You might--with one cartridge--kill one of the devils; and the others--but you know how they devour their own dead. That might break their famine enough so that they'd hold off until I can get back. That's the prize I'm playing for." "And what if you don't get back?" He took her hand in one of his, and with the other he caressed, for a single moment, the lovely flesh of her throat. The love he had for her spoke from his eyes,--such speech as no human vision could possibly mistake. Both of them were tingling and breathless with a great, sweet wonder. "Never let those fangs tear that softness, while you live," he told her gently. "Never let that brave old man on the sled go to his death with the pack tearing at him. Cheat 'em, Snowbird! Beat 'em the last minute, if no other way remains! Show 'em who's boss, after all--of all this forest." "You mean--?" Her eyes widened. "I mean that you must only spend one of those three shells in fighting off the wolves. Save that till the moment you need it most. The other two must be saved--for something else." She nodded, shuddering an instant at a menacing shadow that moved within sixty feet of the fire. The firelight half-blinded them, dim as it was, and they couldn't see into the darkness as well as they had before. Except for strange, blue-yellow lights, close together and two and two about the fire, they might have thought that the pack was gone. "Then good-by, Dan!" she told him. And she stretched up her arms. "The thing I said--that day on the hillside--doesn't hold any more."