they had
heard was not a warning or a menace but the call of Brotherhood. Away
off there--beyond the lynx and the fox and the fisher-cat, were the
creatures of their kind, the wild-wolf pack, to which the right to all
flesh and blood was common--in which existed that savage socialism of
the wilderness, the Brotherhood of the Wolf. And Gray Wolf, setting back
on her haunches, sent forth the response to that cry--a wailing
triumphant note that told her hungry brethren there was feasting at the
end of the trail.

And the lynx, between those two cries, sneaked off into the wide and
moonlit spaces of the forest.

CHAPTER XV

A FIGHT UNDER THE STARS

On their haunches Kazan and Gray Wolf waited. Five minutes passed,
ten--fifteen--and Gray Wolf became uneasy. No response had followed her
call. Again she howled, with Kazan quivering and listening beside her,
and again there followed that dead stillness of the night. This was not
the way of the pack. She knew that it had not gone beyond the reach of
her voice and its silence puzzled her. And then in a flash it came to
them both that the pack, or the single wolf whose cry they had heard,
was very near them. The scent was warm. A few moments later Kazan saw a
moving object in the moonlight. It was followed by another, and still
another, until there were five slouching in a half-circle about them,
seventy yards away. Then they laid themselves flat in the snow and were
motionless.

A snarl turned Kazan's eyes to Gray Wolf. His blind mate had drawn
back. Her white fangs gleamed menacingly in the starlight. Her ears were
flat. Kazan was puzzled. Why was she signaling danger to him when it was
the wolf, and not the lynx, out there in the snow? And why did the
wolves not come in and feast? Slowly he moved toward them, and Gray Wolf
called to him with her whine. He paid no attention to her, but went on,
stepping lightly, his head high in the air, his spine bristling.

In the scent of the strangers, Kazan was catching something now that was
strangely familiar. It drew him toward them more swiftly and when at
last he stopped twenty yards from where the little group lay flattened
in the snow, his thick brush waved slightly. One of the animals sprang
up and approached. The others followed and in another moment Kazan was
in the midst of them, smelling and smelled, and wagging his tail. They
were dogs, and not wolves.

In some lonely cabin in the wilderness their master had d