"Peter," she cried, sobbingly. "Peter!"
Listening to the retreating sound of the sledge, Wapi stood a silent
shadow in the trail. Then he turned and faced the north. He heard the
other sound now, and ahead of it the wind brought him a smell, the smell
of things he hated. For many years something had been fighting itself
toward understanding within him, and the yelping of dogs and the taint in
the air of creatures who had been his slave-masters narrowed his instinct
to the one vital point. Again it was not a process of reason but the
cumulative effect of things that had happened, and were happening. He had
scented menace when first he had given warning of the nearness of
pursuers, and this menace was no longer an elusive and unseizable thing
that had merely stirred the fires of his hatred. It was now a near and
physical fact. He had tried to run away from it--with the woman--but it
had followed and was overtaking him, and the yelping dogs were
challenging him to fight as they had challenged him from the day he was
old enough to take his own part. And now he had something to fight for.
His intelligence gripped the fact that one sledge was running away from
the other, and that the sledge which was running away was his sledge--and
that for his sledge he must fight.
He waited, almost squarely in the trail. There was no longer the
slinking, club-driven attitude of a creature at bay in the manner in
which he stood in the path of his enemies.
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