him, trailed, congealing in bloody lumps of fat. His eyes were wild, the toss of his great arms was wild, and Dick slid the revolver round in his belt, speaking curtly to Kennedy.
"Keep your head and your temper. And don't shoot till you know there's no other way."
The Mounted Policeman who brings his prisoner in dead has to suffer for it. Kennedy remembered, with the apple swelling in his throat, as the men neared. His mind was under fire for the first time, and he began to realise that it is possible for a man to do less than make good. He sat down on the sled nervously; stood up again, and heard the hound growl where it lay with muzzle on stretched paws.
Dick walked three steps and saluted; made another step, and the barrel of a second Winchester shone among the folds of the moose-pelt. Kennedy began to feel sick, for he knew that that ten-shot automatic rifle, and he saw Dick walk straight up to it with unflinching feet. But then he could not see, as Dick saw, the wavering in those red eyes of insanity. Abraham quivered; swerved; made a break for the woods, and Dick swung like a flash and leapt after him.
"Hold the others," he shouted. And the raw, sappy youth jerked forward his revolver and covered the three with shaking hand and heart that quailed as sound died out in the forest.
It was the first searing in the boy's soul of the claims made on manhood, and he stood alone in the sudden dumb silence, striving to make his face look bold. The two weaklings dropped in the snow. The third stood, holding him eye to eye, and the rifle was flung forward along his wrist. The women whimpered, afraid to scream; but the children crawled up to the hunters, dragging at the raw meat. And out of the forest where the grey of dusk drifted there came no sound .
Kennedy's breath caught in great gulps. An insane man occasionally has the strength of ten, and if that maniac came back alone—something at the back of his head said eternally: "I won't run. By , I won't run."
Then he looked down at the hound, straining in the
