d at his flank now, but the four huskies trailed behind him. Once
more he was experiencing that triumph and strange thrill that he had
almost forgotten and only Gray Wolf, in that eternal night of her
blindness, felt with dread foreboding the danger into which his newly
achieved czarship might lead him.

For three days and three nights they remained in the neighborhood of the
dead moose, ready to defend it against others, and yet each day and
each night growing less vigilant in their guard. Then came the fourth
night, on which they killed a young doe. Kazan led in that chase and for
the first time, in the excitement of having the pack at his back, he
left his blind mate behind. When they came to the kill he was the first
to leap at its soft throat. And not until he had begun to tear at the
doe's flesh did the others dare to eat. He was master. He could send
them back with a snarl. At the gleam of his fangs they crouched
quivering on their bellies in the snow.

Kazan's blood was fomented with brute exultation, and the excitement and
fascination that came in the possession of new power took the place of
Gray Wolf each day a little more. She came in half an hour after the
kill, and there was no longer the lithesome alertness to her slender
legs, or gladness in the tilt of her ears or the poise of her head. She
did not eat much of the doe. Her blind face was turned always in Kazan's
direction. Wherever he moved she followed with her unseeing eyes, as if
expecting each moment his old signal to her--that low throat-note that
had called to her so often when they were alone in the wilderness.

In Kazan, as leader of the pack, there was working a curious change. If
his mates had been wolves it would not have been difficult for Gray Wolf
to have lured him away. But Kazan was among his own kind. He was a dog.
And they were dogs. Fires that had burned down and ceased to warm him
flamed up in him anew. In his life with Gray Wolf one thing had
oppressed him as it could not oppress her, and that thing was
loneliness. Nature had created him of that kind which requires
companionship--not of one but of many. It had given him birth that he
might listen to and obey the commands of the voice of man. He had grown
to hate men, but of the dogs--his kind--he was a part. He had been happy
with Gray Wolf, happier than he had ever been in the companionship of
men and his blood-brothers. But he had been a long time separated from
the life that ha