Now by every law of the chase the game belonged to these earlier
hunters; and by every power in their gaunt, famished bodies the wolves
meant to have it. So said the trail. Every stealthy advance in single
file across, the open, every swift rush over the hollows that might hide
them from eyes watching back from the distant woods, showed the wolves'
purpose clear as daylight; and had Noel been wiser he would have read a
warning from the snow and turned aside. But he only drew his longest,
keenest arrow and pressed on more eagerly than before.
The two trails had crossed each other at last. Beginning near together,
one on the mountains, the other by the sea, they had followed their
separate devious ways, now far apart in the glad bright summer, now
drawing together in the moonlight of the winter's night. At times the
makers of the trails had watched each other in secret, shyly,
inquisitively, at a distance; but always fear or cunning had kept them
apart, the boy with his keen hunter's interest baffled and whetted by
the brutes' wariness, and the wolves drawn to the superior being by that
subtle instinct that once made glad hunting-dogs and collies of the wild
rangers of the plains, and that still leads a wolf to follow and watch
the doings of men with intense curiosity.
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