around.  They hadn’t heard anything.  “Wha-?” asked Blitz, but he was cut off as Hadji whipped his head to the left.  “There it is again,” he said.  “You no hear it?”

 And then they did hear it.  In the distance behind them came a long, moaning call.  The Rovers couldn’t suppress a small shiver at the sound.  “What’s that?” asked Blitz.

 “Sign is time to be moving,” answered Hadji with a note of dread in his voice.  “Hurry!”

 They pressed on as quickly as they could, but the sound kept coming closer and closer.  Soon it was coming from behind one moment, off to their side the next, then behind them again.

 Sonam stopped.  “They got us,” he announced.

 The calls came closer and closer.  “Uh, guys?” muttered Hunter.  “Just a hunch, but I think we might be in trouble.”

 Sonam was clenching his walking stick tightly.  “Whatever you do, no look in eyes,” he told the Rovers.  “They kill if you do.”

 “Who will?” asked Blitz as Shag whimpered.

 A crunch of feet in the snow approached from all around them.  “Not who, what,” the boy corrected.

 Then the first one appeared, climbing over a massive rock like a demon king rising out of the floor in a play.  A huge white body covered from head to toe in long, thick fur.  Arms that could have bench-pressed a truck, and legs like pillars ending in massive bare feet.  Sonam shivered as he whispered, “Yetis.”

 The Rovers clustered back-to-back with Shag cowering in the center as a dozen more appeared.  The Rovers were completely surrounded.

 “They’ve got us outnumbered two to one,” Colleen observed.  “Any ideas, gents?”

 “I have one,” Blitz offered.  “I suggest we all scream uncontrollably.”

 “No!” whispered Sonam, wrapping a hand around the Doberman’s muzzle.  “Keep voices down!  Alan say yetis no like yelling, make mad.  And no look in eyes!  They kill.”

 “So what do we do?” asked Hunter.

 Sonam shrugged.  “Alan think they want we leave alone,” he suggested, hunkering down and favoring his arm.  “Maybe we act hurt, they not hurt us.”  The Rovers copied his example, but as the first yeti came forward they wondered if it would work.

 “Please, oh, please, oh please,” Blitz could be heard quietly begging.  “I’m too pretty to die.”

 Sonam made a face.  “He always like that?” he asked.

 Exile nodded.  “The weird boy is case of lost basket needing many marbles.”

 The white apes crowded in to examine the dogs, pointing and gesturing while they exchanged low grunts as if talking.  Then one bent down and picked up Blitz.

 “No-ho-ho-ho!” he sobbed.  “Don’t take me, please!”

 “Quiet!” hissed Sonam urgently.

 Evidently the yeti agreed.  It shook Blitz until he stopped, then grasped him in one huge arm.  One by one the rest were scooped up except for Shag, whom they coaxed to his feet and then urged to walk along.

 “Looks like the villagers aren’t the only ones who think he looks like a yeti,” whispered Colleen.

 Hunter nodded, then turned to Hadji.  “You think this is a good idea?” he asked.

 Sonam nodded.  “Yeti big, strong, very strong,” he whispered.  “If they no kill, I happy.”

The pallid primates carried them a long way before finally entering a large cave.  Glowing fungus on the walls provided some illumination as they wandered through.  But the fungus wasn’t the surprising thing.

 Yetis.  At least two dozen of them were scattered around the cave, sitting on the floor or staring at the walls or curled up asleep.  At the entry of the Rovers and their captors, the residents of the cave gathered around to examine their guests.  More grunting talk was exchanged, and finally they seemed to reach a decision.  The team was taken over by a pile of brush and set down.  Shag, meanwhile, was left to his own devices.  He went over to them and sat down, muttering something.

 “What he say?” asked Sonam.

 “He wants to know what they’re doing with us,” replied Hunter.  “And I wouldn’t mind knowing that either.”

 “They probably want to eat us,” groaned Blitz, biting his nails.

 “I no think so,” whispered Sonam.  “They not hurt us yet.”

 “Then why they catch us like fish in hand?” asked Exile.  At a puzzled look from his teammates, he weakly offered, “Birds in net?”

 “Okay, that kinda made sense,” Hunter admitted.

 A small yeti, apparently a baby, toddled over to them with a fist-sized rock, which it threw toward them.  Colleen wasn’t quick enough, and the rock landed on her hand.  “Ow!” she cried.

 The baby ape ran to her and retrieved the rock.  This time it rolled the rock toward the dogs.

 “I think I get it,” Hunter muttered.  He scooped up the rock and tossed it back to the yeti, who caught it with ease.  It uttered some excited-sounding grunts and threw it back.

 “It playing?” asked Sonam in total befuddlement as Hunter caught the rock.

 “Wait a minute,” muttered Colleen, “If they brought us ‘ere to play, then they must think…”

 The group exchanged worried glances.  “We’re their pets,” they chorused.

 That was when Shag started muttering excitedly.  “Rah reh ruh rara rah!” he exclaimed.

 “What?” asked Sonam.

 “He said look at… whoa!” Hunter nearly jumped out of his skin.  Shag had pulled aside the pile of branches.  There, as still as a statue, lay…

 “Alan!” cried Sonam.

The yetis turned in their direction with an irritable growl, and Sonam toned his voice down.  “Alan!” he whispered.

 “I would not have predicted this,” added Hunter.

 “We’ve got to figure some way of getting him out of ‘ere,” worried Colleen as she gingerly examined a scabbed-over gash on the man’s forehead.  “With a bump on the noggin like that, there’s no telling what kind of damage might have been done.”

 “He alive?” queried Sonam.

 Colleen removed a glove and slid two fingers down under the man’s scarf.  “Oh, he’s alive,” she assured the group after a moment’s silence.  “But if he’s not properly cared for, he might not last long.”  She briefly ran her hands over him, checking for injuries.  “Leg feels pretty bad too.”

 “What should we do?” asked Blitz.

 Colleen picked up some branches and pulled out a roll of bandages, which she used to make a splint for the leg.  “I think Shag should be able to carry him without hurting him much, which only leaves us one problem.”  Looking back at the cave, she added, “Or rather three dozen of them.”

 Hunter smiled as he pulled a couple of bones out of his pocket.  “I think I can take care of that.”

 “Bones get rid of yetis?” asked Sonam quizzically.

 “Oh, you’d be surprised,” winked Hunter.  He and the other Rovers pulled out gas masks.  “I dunno if this’ll fit you,” Hunter told Sonam as he passed him one, “so hold your breath just in case.”

 Staring at the apes, Hunter threw the bones.  The bones fell, broke open, and released a pink gas.  Every ape the gas reached fell to its knees, coughing and holding its throat.

 “Let’s go!” called Hunter.  Shag scooped up Alan, and together the group dashed past the coughing apes and into the snow.

 “Where we go?” asked Sonam.

 “Anywhere but here-ski!” Exile answered.

 Colleen rolled a snowball and threw it at the snow above the cave’s mouth.  A mini-avalanche came down, blocking the entrance almost completely except for a small hole which trailed vapors from Hunter’s gas bones.  “That oughta hold them for awhile,” she said.

 “Then let us hurry,” urged Sonam.  “Waste is timing.”

 As they ran, Hunter glanced at Colleen.  “How’d you do that thing with the snowball?”

 “Ah, you’d be amazed what you can learn on a ski vacation,” she replied.

 The Rovers found a cave nearby, this one free of yetis, where Exile lit a fire while Colleen splinted Alan’s leg and the others sought some way of reviving him.  Shag produced a bottle of water, but nothing came out when he tipped it.  It was frozen solid.

 “Let me try,” volunteered Sonam.  He went outside and brought back a handful of snow, which he held in his bare fist over Alan’s face.

 “How does he keep his hand from freezin’?” asked Colleen.  “Here I can barely feel me own nose.”

 Sonam was oblivious.  He squeezed the snow, and the heat from his hand melted it so a few drops fell onto the man’s face.  Alan groaned and shifted slightly.

 “Ruh rah!” cheered Shag, but Sonam remained silent.  He squeezed the snow harder, and more water fell.  After several drops, Alan groaned and opened his eyes.  “Wha…?” he asked drowsily.

 “Alan!”  Sonam tossed aside the snow and threw his arms around his friend’s neck.

 Alan dumbly took it in.  “ Sonam…?” he asked.

 Sonam helped his friend sit up, but the man winced and grunted in pain when his leg shifted.  “My leg,” he groaned.  “It feels like I broke it in that avalanche.”

 “Just take it easy, pal,” Hunter told him.  “You’ll be fine now that the we're here.”

 Shag offered him a drink from a bottle of water, now thawed by a little help from Exile’s heat vision.  Sonam began to babble excitedly.  “You get lost, many days!  Dog-men and dog-woman come rescue,