owing and then went on until he struck an open
and hard traveled trail. It was beaten with the footprints of men and
dogs, and over it two of the caribou had been dragged a day or two
before.

At last he came to the thinned out strip of timber that surrounded the
clearing and the flare of the flames was in his eyes. The bedlam of
sound that came to him now was like fire in his brain. He heard the song
and the laughter of men, the shrill cries of women and children, the
barking and snarling and fighting of a hundred dogs. He wanted to rush
out and join them, to become again a part of what he had once been. Yard
by yard he sneaked through the thin timber until he reached the edge of
the clearing. There he stood in the shadow of a spruce and looked out
upon life as he had once lived it, trembling, wistful and yet hesitating
in that final moment.

A hundred yards away was the savage circle of men and dogs and fire. His
nostrils were filled with the rich aroma of the roasting caribou, and as
he crouched down, still with that wolfish caution that Gray Wolf had
taught him, men with long poles brought the huge carcasses crashing down
upon the melting snow about the fires. In one great rush the horde of
wild revelers crowded in with bared knives, and a snarling mass of dogs
closed in behind them. In another moment he had forgotten Gray Wolf, had
forgotten all that man and the wild had taught him, and like a gray
streak was across the open.

The dogs were surging back when he reached them, with half a dozen of
the factor's men lashing them in the faces with long caribou-gut whips.
The sting of a lash fell in a fierce cut over an Eskimo dog's shoulder,
and in snapping at the lash his fangs struck Kazan's rump. With
lightning swiftness Kazan returned the cut, and in an instant the jaws
of the dogs had met. In another instant they were down and Kazan had the
Eskimo dog by the throat.

With shouts the men rushed in. Again and again their whips cut like
knives through the air. Their blows fell on Kazan, who was uppermost,
and as he felt the burning pain of the scourging whips there flooded
through him all at once the fierce memory of the days of old--the days
of the Club and the Lash. He snarled. Slowly he loosened his hold of the
Eskimo dog's throat. And then, out of the melee of dogs and men, there
sprang another man--_with a club_! It fell on Kazan's back and the force
of it sent him flat into the snow. It was raised again. Beh