ay from the trail. With
the desire that was growing in him there was still that old suspicion
which nothing could quite wipe out--the suspicion that was an
inheritance of his quarter-strain of wolf. Gray Wolf whined joyfully
when he turned into the forest, and drew so close to him that her
shoulder rubbed against Kazan's as they traveled side by side.

The "slush" snows followed fast after this. And the "slush" snows meant
spring--and the emptying of the wilderness of human life. Kazan and his
mates soon began to scent the presence and the movement of this life.
They were now within thirty miles of the post. For a hundred miles on
all sides of them the trappers were moving in with their late winter's
catch of furs. From east and west, south and north, all trails led to
the post. The pack was caught in the mesh of them. For a week not a day
passed that they did not cross a fresh trail, and sometimes two or
three.

Gray Wolf was haunted by constant fear. In her blindness she knew that
they were surrounded by the menace of men. To Kazan what was coming to
pass had more and more ceased to fill him with fear and caution. Three
times that week he heard the shouts of men--and once he heard a white
man's laughter and the barking of dogs as their master tossed them their
daily feed of fish. In the air he caught the pungent scent of camp-fires
and one night, in the far distance, he heard a wild snatch of song,
followed by the yelping and barking of a dog-pack.

Slowly and surely the lure of man drew him nearer to the post--a mile
to-night, two miles to-morrow, but always nearer. And Gray Wolf,
fighting her losing fight to the end, sensed in the danger-filled air
the nearness of that hour when he would respond to the final call and
she would be left alone.

These were days of activity and excitement at the fur company's post,
the days of accounting, of profit and of pleasure;--the days when the
wilderness poured in its treasure of fur, to be sent a little later to
London and Paris and the capitals of Europe. And this year there was
more than the usual interest in the foregathering of the forest people.
The plague had wrought its terrible havoc, and not until the fur-hunters
had come to answer to the spring roll-call would it be known accurately
who had lived and who had died.

The Chippewans and half-breeds from the south began to arrive first,
with their teams of mongrel curs, picked up along the borders of
civilization. Cl