sheer delight as he flashed in and out upon Jan, drawing blood every
single time, reaching bone more than once or twice, and winning back to
safety without the loss of so much as one hair.

Jan no longer snarled. He had no breath to waste. He was standing to his
fearsome punishment like a bulldog now. And like a bulldog he seemed, in
a heavy, dogged way, and almost to glory in the bitter thrusts he took.

Then Bill overstepped himself. Striving to win a second bite from the
one rush, he got the full thrust of Jan's bloody right shoulder so
shrewdly directed that Bill went down under it as corn under a sickle.
So far so good for Jan; and by good rights that thrust should have given
him his lead to victory. But the plain truth is Jan was too full of
moose-meat. He plunged down and forward for the throat-hold--appreciably
too late--and lost more than blood and fur from his flank as Bill
wheeled into action again without any apparent loss of poise, though he
had turned completely over on the snow.

Jan breathed like a bull as he resumed the defensive; and like a bull he
lowered his head with a swaying motion as though to ease his labored
breathing and drain his jaws of the spume that clogged them. He was
bleeding now from more than a dozen wounds. The frost nipped those
wounds stingingly. The hard trampled snow about his feet was flecked
with blood and foam--his life-blood, his foam. Bill remained unscathed
and to all seeming as coldly calculating as ever.

At this stage a backer of Jan (if any such reckless wight existed) might
easily have booked a hundred to one against the big hound from an
audience of experienced northland men, had any been there to see this
wonderful fray. It seemed a breathless business enough, with never a
moment for anything like reflection. But of a truth, as Jan swung his
massive head now in a gesture which added blazing coals to the fire of
triumphant hate in Bill, his mind was busy with a mort of curious
things. There were many differences between Jan and the average dog, and
this illustrated one of them. As he stood heavily swaying to Bill's
lightning attacks, he saw pictures in his busy mind through a mist of
blood; pictures that made the whole business of this fight far more
terrible for him than it would have been for most dogs.

The dominating picture Jan saw, and the one that kept forcing itself
forward upon the screen of his imagination through and over all the
others that came and we