It was twelve o’clock when Dick Kent’s turn came to stand watch, and it was with some difficulty that he shook the sleep out of his eyes when Constable Sloan spoke to him.
“Don’t think we’ll have any trouble tonight after all,” the Constable reassured him. “The Eskimos seem pretty quiet, but be ready for anything and don’t hesitate to call McCarthy and me if anything unusual turns up. Good night.”
Dick shivered as he took his post at the entrance of the tupik with rifle in his mittened hands. The dogs were quarreling among themselves where they were leashed to the sledges, and from the Eskimos’ tupik came the muffled sound of voices. They did not seem as quiet now as Constable Sloan had reported them. They were speaking in their native tongue and Dick could not understand what they were talking about.
“I’ll just keep close watch of their tent,” he murmured to himself. “If any of them try to sneak away I’ll call the policemen.”
An hour passed, the Eskimos quieting down and apparently falling asleep. The vast silence of the far north brooded over the little encampment, when Dick detected, out of the corner of his eye, a movement beyond the huddled dogs. It was like a small animal that had moved across the top of a snowdrift. Dick’s heart skipped a beat as he strained his eyes to catch sight of whatever had appeared.
A dog growled, and Dick spoke quietly to the big huskies, getting up and going to them. The leader of the team, a giant malemute, was sitting up, his ears alert, and his nose wriggling as he sniffed the air uneasily.
“What is it, old boy?” whispered Dick. “What do you see?”
The malemute growled ominously in answer, his hair rising along his back as he scented some sort of danger.
Dick looked carefully about camp again, seeking the cause for the dog’s uneasiness, but all seemed peaceful enough. Impulsively, he decided to walk out to the drift where he had seen the suspicious movement, thinking he would find there the tracks of some animal.
The drift was only about fifty yards from the sledges where the dogs were tied, and Dick soon reached it. About to go around the drift and investigate, a weird, low call from behind him brought him to an abrupt halt, the blood congealing in his veins at the strangeness of the sound. He turned and looked back at camp. There came a soft swishing sound from the snowdrift he had been about to inspect, and he whirled to see a dark form bearing down upon him. His startled cry was cut off sharply as something hard descended forcefully upon his head and he went down in the snow, thousands of stars blazing before his eyes.