Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/248

230 a moment was always needed after its last note had died to regain their gayety.

"They 're getting lean and they 're getting savage," Lennox said one night, stretched on his divan before the fireplace. He was still unable to walk; but the fractures were knitting slowly and the doctor had promised that the summer would find him well. "If we had a dog, I would n't offer much for his life. One of these days we 'll find 'em in a big circle around the house—and then we 'll have to open up with the rifles."

But this picture appalled neither of his two young listeners. No wolf pack can stand against three marksmen, armed with rifles and behind oaken walls.

Christmas came and passed, and January brought clear days and an ineffective sun shining on the snow. These were the best days of all. Every afternoon Dan and Snowbird would go out on their skis or on snowshoes, unarmed except for the pistol that Snowbird carried in the deep pocket of her mackinaw. "But why not?" Dan replied to Lennox's objection. "She could kill five wolves with five shots, or pretty near it, and you know well enough that that would hold 'em off till we got home. They'd stop to eat the five. I have hard enough time keeping up with her as it is,