r and stormless night following the days of plague and
famine, a hundred thousand hungry creatures came out from their retreats
to hunt for food. For eighteen hundred miles east and west and a
thousand miles north and south, slim gaunt-bellied creatures hunted
under the moon and the stars. Something told Kazan and Gray Wolf that
this hunt was on, and never for an instant did they cease their
vigilance. At last they lay down at the edge of the spruce thicket, and
waited. Gray Wolf muzzled Kazan gently with her blind face. The uneasy
whine in her throat was a warning to him. Then she sniffed the air, and
listened--sniffed and listened.

Suddenly every muscle in their bodies grew rigid. Something living had
passed near them, something that they could not see or hear, and
scarcely scent. It came again, as mysterious as a shadow, and then out
of the air there floated down as silently as a huge snowflake a great
white owl. Kazan saw the hungry winged creature settle on the bull's
shoulder. Like a flash he was out from his cover, Gray Wolf a yard
behind him. With an angry snarl he lunged at the white robber, and his
jaws snapped on empty air. His leap carried him clean over the bull. He
turned, but the owl was gone.

Nearly all of his old strength had returned to him now. He trotted about
the bull, the hair along his spine bristling like a brush, his eyes
wide and menacing. He snarled at the still air. His jaws clicked, and he
sat back on his haunches and faced the blood-stained trail that the
moose had left before he died. Again that instinct as infallible as
reason told him that danger would come from there.

Like a red ribbon the trail ran back through the wilderness. The little
swift-moving ermine were everywhere this night, looking like white rats
as they dodged about in the moonlight. They were first to find the
trail, and with all the ferocity of their blood-eating nature followed
it with quick exciting leaps. A fox caught the scent of it a quarter of
a mile to windward, and came nearer. From out of a deep windfall a
beady-eyed, thin-bellied fisher-cat came forth, and stopped with his
feet in the crimson ribbon.

It was the fisher-cat that brought Kazan out; from under his cover of
spruce again. In the moonlight there was a sharp quick fight, a snarling
and scratching, a cat-like yowl of pain, and the fisher forgot his
hunger in flight. Kazan returned to Gray Wolf with a lacerated and
bleeding nose. Gray Wolf licked