s mate no
longer required his flank for guidance. With her nose close to the trail
she ran--ran as she had run in the long and thrilling hunts before
blindness came. Half a mile from the spruce thicket they came upon the
old bull. He had sought shelter behind a clump of balsam, and he stood
over a growing pool of blood in the snow. He was still breathing hard.
His massive head, grotesque now with its one antler, was drooping.
Flecks of blood dropped from his distended nostrils. Even then, with the
old bull weakened by starvation, exhaustion and loss of blood, a
wolf-pack would have hung back before attacking. Where they would have
hesitated, Kazan leaped in with a snarling cry. For an instant his fangs
sunk into the thick hide of the bull's throat. Then he was flung
back--twenty feet. Hunger gnawing at his vitals robbed him of all
caution, and he sprang to the attack again--full at the bull's
front--while Gray Wolf crept up unseen behind, seeking in her blindness
the vulnerable part which nature had not taught Kazan to find.

This time Kazan was caught fairly on the broad palmate leaf of the
bull's antler, and he was flung back again, half stunned. In that same
moment Gray Wolf's long white teeth cut like knives through one of the
bull's rope-like hamstrings. For thirty seconds she kept the hold, while
the bull plunged wildly in his efforts to trample her underfoot. Kazan
was quick to learn, still quicker to be guided by Gray Wolf, and he
leaped in again, snapping for a hold on the bulging cord just above the
knee. He missed, and as he lunged forward on his shoulders Gray Wolf was
flung off. But she had accomplished her purpose. Beaten in open battle
with one of his kind, and now attacked by a still deadlier foe, the old
bull began to retreat. As he went, one hip sank under him at every step.
The tendon of his left leg was bitten half through.

Without being able to see, Gray Wolf seemed to realize what had
happened. Again she was the pack-wolf--with all the old wolf strategy.
Twice flung back by the old bull's horn, Kazan knew better than to
attack openly again. Gray Wolf trotted after the bull, but he remained
behind for a moment to lick up hungrily mouthfuls of the blood-soaked
snow. Then he followed, and ran close against Gray Wolf's side, fifty
yards behind the bull. There was more blood in the trail now--a thin red
ribbon of it. Fifteen minutes later the bull stopped again, and faced
about, his great head lowered