Often he had seen this happen in the approach
of summer storm on the tundras, but never had the change seemed so swift
as now. Where there had been golden light, he saw his companion's face
now pale in a sea of dusk. It was this miracle of arctic night, its
suddenness and unexpectedness, that had startled her, he thought, and he
laughed softly.
But her hand clutched his arm. "I saw them," she cried, her voice
breaking. "I saw them--out there against the sun--before the cloud
came--and some of them were running, like animals--"
"Shadows!" he exclaimed. "The long shadows of foxes running against the
sun, or of the big gray rabbits, or of a wolf and her half-grown
sneaking away--"
"No, no, they were not that," she breathed tensely, and her fingers
clung more fiercely to his arm. "They were not shadows. _They
were men_!"
CHAPTER XXIV
In the moment of stillness between them, when their hearts seemed to
have stopped beating that they might not lose the faintest whispering of
the twilight, a sound came to Alan, and he knew it was the toe of a boot
striking against stone. Not a foot in his tribe would have made that
sound; none but Stampede Smith's or his own.
"Were they many?" he asked.
"I could not see. The sun was darkening. But five or six were running--"
"Behind us?"
"Yes.
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