They followed stealthily the winding records of a score of
caribou that had wandered like an eddying wind all over the barren,
stopping here and there to paw great holes in the snow for the caribou
moss that covered all the earth beneath. Out at the end of the trail two
Indian children, a girl and a boy, stole along with noiseless steps,
scanning the wide wastes for a cloud of mist--the frozen breath that
hovers over a herd of caribou--or peering keenly into the edges of the
woods for vague white shapes moving like shadows among the trees. So
they moved on swiftly, silently, till the boy stopped with a startled
exclamation, whipped out a long arrow with a barbed steel point, and
laid it ready across his bow. For at his feet was another light trail,
the trail of a wolf pack, that crossed his own, moving straight and
swift across the barren toward the unseen caribou.
Just in front, as the boy stopped, a slight motion broke the even white
surface that stretched away silent and lifeless on every side,--a motion
so faint and natural that Noel's keen eyes, sweeping the plain and the
edges of the distant woods, never noticed it.
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