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But when you are ready to perish with hunger, you will take risks which at other times you would not even think about; and so it happened that one February afternoon, as the Porky was trundling himself deliberately over the snow-crust, a fierce-looking animal with dark fur, bushy tail, and pointed nose sprang at him from behind a tree and tried to catch him by the throat, where the quills did not grow, and there was nothing but soft, warm fur.
The half-breed insisted that he had really heard the patter of the wolves' feet on the snow-crust, but the timber cruiser laughed at him, and lay down to sleep again. An hour later the performance was repeated, and this time the white man was angry. "Don't you wake me up again, Louis. You're so rattled you don't know what you're doing."
Low-hung, blazing, the stars light the sky, and over the diamond-dusted snow-crust the moonbeams splinter. Though sensing the glory of such nights as these I was careful about referring to it. Restraint in such matters was the rule. If you said, "It is a fine day," or "The night is as clear as a bell," you had gone quite as far as the proprieties permitted. Love was also a forbidden word.
Eugene Hautville, on the roan, was coming at a mad run across the open field on the right towards the turn of the road. It seemed for a second as if Madelon would reach it before he did; but they met there, and the roan reared to a stop in the narrow road directly in front of the old white, who plunged furiously. "Look out there!" shouted Eugene, as the sleigh tilted on the snow-crust.
She obeyed, and when he had carefully folded the robes and divers furs about her body, he stepped a few paces to one side, and gently lifting up a round lid of snow-crust, placed it over the aperture. It had been so smoothly cut, and fitted with such precision when replaced, that no one would have been able to discover that an incision had been made.
I was leading the way over this plateau when I suddenly found myself up to my knees in water and quickly sinking deeper through the snow-crust. I flung myself down and called to the others to do the same, so as to distribute our weight on the treacherous surface. We were on top of a small lake, snow-covered.
I took a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic spring over the snow-crust, straightening its body and its limbs into graceful length, and soon put the forest between me and itself the wild free venison, asserting its vigor and the dignity of Nature. Not without reason was its slenderness. Such then was its nature. What is a country without rabbits and partridges?
Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow-crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling for light and to be dogs outright and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men?
The Indian at the same time pointed to the ground for me to see a track, but no mark of any kind was visible to my eye not a scratch or impression on the hard snow-crust. Now the dog left the trees again and led us up the steep, rough side of the mountain a most difficult path to climb, frozen as it was.
Ahead of them there loomed up out of the darkness a clump of sapling spruce, and into their shadow the girl disappeared. A dozen paces more and Philip himself was buried in the thick gloom. He heard quick, light footsteps in the snow-crust ahead of him.
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