Ugruk’s wild adventure had begun two nights before.
He had wakened in the warm igloo with a sense of misgiving. Perhaps it was a telepathic message—neither he nor anyone else will ever know as to this. Driven by a power outside himself, he had got up, dressed, and emerged into the storm. As on a hundred other nights, he had trudged over to the trading building to look at Gretchen’s window. Almost at once he had discovered that the sled-dogs were gone from their shelters; and the almost-obliterated sled-tracks told the rest.
His bird had flown. Ugruk had been close to madness, perhaps even to murder, in that first hour of discovery. Frantic, desperate, he had started running across the cape toward the frozen bays. If he had any idea at all, it was to run down the fugitives on foot.
But h
