aces, and led him
toward the cabin door. Kazan hesitated but once--almost on the
threshold. He turned his head, swift and alert. From out of the moaning
and wailing of the storm it seemed to him that for a moment he had heard
the voice of Gray Wolf.

Then the cabin door closed behind him.

Back in a shadowy corner of the cabin he lay, while the man prepared
something over a hot stove for Joan. It was a long time before Joan rose
from the cot on which the man had placed her. After that Kazan heard her
sobbing; and then the man made her eat, and for a time they talked. Then
the stranger hung up a big blanket in front of the bunk, and sat down
close to the stove. Quietly Kazan slipped along the wall, and crept
under the bunk. For a long time he could hear the sobbing breath of the
girl. Then all was still.

The next morning he slipped out through the door when the man opened it,
and sped swiftly into the forest. Half a mile away he found the trail of
Gray Wolf, and called to her. From the frozen river came her reply, and
he went to her.

Vainly Gray Wolf tried to lure him back into their old haunts--away from
the cabin and the scent of man. Late that morning the man harnessed his
dogs, and from the fringe of the forest Kazan saw him tuck Joan and the
baby among the furs on the sledge, as old Pierre had done. All that day
he followed in the trail of the team, with Gray Wolf slinking behind
him. They traveled until dark; and then, under the stars and the moon
that had followed the storm, the man still urged on his team. It was
deep in the night when they came to another cabin, and the man beat upon
the door. A light, the opening of the door, the joyous welcome of a
man's voice, Joan's sobbing cry--Kazan heard these from the shadows in
which he was hidden, and then slipped back to Gray Wolf.

In the days and weeks that followed Joan's home-coming the lure of the
cabin and of the woman's hand held Kazan. As he had tolerated Pierre, so
now he tolerated the younger man who lived with Joan and the baby. He
knew that the man was very dear to Joan, and that the baby was very dear
to him, as it was to the girl. It was not until the third day that Joan
succeeded in coaxing him into the cabin--and that was the day on which
the man returned with the dead and frozen body of Pierre. It was Joan's
husband who first found the name on the collar he wore, and they began
calling him Kazan.

Half a mile away, at the summit of a huge mas