Page:Silversheene (1924).djvu/173

 came forth and joined their voices to his, although they did not know what it was all about.

Finally, when he had fully vented his grief in the only language of the dog heart, he drove the pups back into the den and told them in a language which they understood to stay where they were until he returned. Then, with head up and nostrils wide for every scent, he set out to find and destroy the slayer of his mate. He soon reached the bank of the river and almost immediately scented the trail of a man.

It was not the trail of an Indian, or of an Eskimo, but of a white man. After testing the trail first upstream and then down Silversheene decided that it led upstream and followed it eagerly. But as he followed this trail of the white man and occasionally got the scent more plainly, a strange sense stirred within him. It was faint at first but it grew stronger and stronger. For the trail of the white man brought back all the details of the white civilization.