Page:Silversheene (1924).djvu/143

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and the dog team and the man were all buried in a twenty-foot drift.

An hour later the snow in a spot twenty feet away began wriggling about strangely. Then the head and the shoulders of a silver gray dog appeared, and finally the full form of Silversheene. He of all his team mates had struggled to freedom. He had gnawed his traces and tunnelled his way to the surface. But his team mates were too nearly dead with fatigue to make any such effort. They would lie there and freeze. They were too tired to move.

When he finally emerged from the snow Silversheene shook himself and looked about. Back down the river was the town. Away up the river there were probably more towns. But in the town were men, and he had seen enough of men. Across the Yukon to the north the wilderness was calling to him. The wilderness from which his ancestors had sprung. This wilderness could not be as brutal as were such men as François.