The dogs flung themselves down in their harness, panting, with gaping jaws, the snow reddening under their bleeding feet.

The men, too, showed signs of terrible strain.

The elder of these, as we have said, was an Indian, pure breed of the great Northern wilderness.

His companion was a youth who had not yet reached his twenties, slender, but with the strength and agility of an animal in his limbs, his handsome face bronzed by the free life of the forest, and in his veins a plentiful strain of that blood which made his comrade kin.
In those two we have again met our old friends Mukoki and Wabigoon: Mukoki, the faithful old warrior and pathfinder, and Wabigoon, the adventurous half-Indian son of the factor of Wabinosh House.

Both were at the height of some great excitement.