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Updated: April 30, 2025
Bram's jaws ceased their crunching. For a moment Philip did not look up. When he did he was startled. Bram's eyes were blazing with a red fire. He was staring at the cooked food. Never had Philip seen such a look in a human face before. He reached out and seized a chunk of bannock, and was about to bite into it when with the snarl of a wild beast Bram dropped his meat and was at him.
They were monsters, for the under-grown ones he killed. Perhaps he would have given them freedom in place of death, but these wolf-beasts of Bram's would not accept freedom. In him they recognized instinctively the super-beast, and they were his slaves. And Bram, monstrous and half animal himself, loved them. To him they were brother, sister, wife all creation.
Such a club, in the event of a rush attack by the Eskimos, was an important necessity, and he began looking about the cabin to see what he could lay his hands on. He thought of the sapling cross-pieces in Bram's bunk against the wall and tore one out.
"Why talk?" "I wanted to ask you why it was that you killed a man down in the God's Lake country." The words were out before Philip could stop them. A growl rose in Bram's chest. It was like the growl of a beast. The greenish fire in his eyes grew brighter. "Ze poleece," he said. "KA, ze poleece like kam from Churchill an' ze wolve keel!" Philip's hand was fumbling in his pocket.
And Bram continued to laugh and as he laughed, his eyes blazing a greenish fire, he turned to the stove and began putting fuel into the fire. It was horrible. Bram's laugh the girl's dead white face, AND HER SMILE! He no longer asked himself who she was, and why she was there.
He caught the glare of twenty pairs of eyes fastened on his retreat and involuntarily he shrank back that they might not see him. He knew that it was Bram who was holding them back, and yet he had heard no word, no command. Even as he stared a long snakelike shadow uncurled itself swiftly in the air and the twenty foot lash of Bram's caribou-gut whip cracked viciously over the heads of the pack.
Cowardice was the last thing he would associate with the strange man he had seen in the starlight. Vividly he saw Bram's face again. And now, after the almost unbearable strain he had been under, a mysterious SOMETHING that had been in that face impinged itself upon him above all other things.
At the warning of the whip the horde of beasts scattered, and Bram's voice came again. "M'sieu ze revolv' ze knife or I loose ze wolve " The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Philip's revolver flew through the opening and dropped in the snow. "There it is, old man," announced Philip. "And here comes the knife." His sheath-knife followed the revolver. "Shall I throw out my bed?" he asked.
The caribou haunch had not weighed more than sixty or seventy pounds, which was scarcely half a burden for Bram's powerful shoulders. In the edge of the timber, where he could secure wood for his fire, Philip began to prepare. He cooked food for six days. Three days he would follow Bram out into that unmapped and treeless space the Great Barren.
Philip's hand had slipped to the butt of his revolver, but he had no intention of using it. Then he found his voice. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should say what he did. "Hello, Bram!" "Boo-joo, m'sieu!" Only Bram's thick lips moved. His voice was low and guttural. Almost instantly his head disappeared from the opening. Philip dug himself quickly from his sleeping-bag.
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