back of Kazan's neck, and the
toughness of his muscles, saved him from that terrible fate of the
vanquished. The wolf's teeth sank deep, but not deep enough to reach the
vital spot, and suddenly Kazan put every ounce of strength in his limbs
to the effort, and flung himself up bodily from under his antagonist.
The grip on his neck relaxed, and with another rearing leap he tore
himself free.

As swift as a whip-lash he whirled on the broken-legged leader of the
pack and with the full rush and weight of his shoulders struck him
fairly in the side. More deadly than the throat-grip had Kazan sometimes
found the lunge when delivered at the right moment. It was deadly now.
The big gray wolf lost his feet, rolled upon his back for an instant,
and the pack rushed in, eager to rend the last of life from the leader
whose power had ceased to exist.

From out of that gray, snarling, bloody-lipped mass, Kazan drew back,
panting and bleeding. He was weak. There was a curious sickness in his
head. He wanted to lie down in the snow. But the old and infallible
instinct warned him not to betray that weakness. From out of the pack a
slim, lithe, gray she-wolf came up to him, and lay down in the snow
before him, and then rose swiftly and sniffed at his wounds.

She was young and strong and beautiful, but Kazan did not look at her.
Where the fight had been he was looking, at what little remained of the
old leader. The pack had returned to the feast. He heard again the
cracking of bones and the rending of flesh, and something told him that
hereafter all the wilderness would hear and recognize his voice, and
that when he sat back on his haunches and called to the moon and the
stars, those swift-footed hunters of the big plain would respond to it.
He circled twice about the caribou and the pack, and then trotted off to
the edge of the black spruce forest.

When he reached the shadows he looked back. Gray Wolf was following him.
She was only a few yards behind. And now she came up to him, a little
timidly, and she, too, looked back to the dark blotch of life out on the
lake. And as she stood there close beside him, Kazan sniffed at
something in the air that was not the scent of blood, nor the perfume of
the balsam and spruce. It was a thing that seemed to come to him from
the clear stars, the cloudless moon, the strange and beautiful quiet of
the night itself. And its presence seemed to be a part of Gray Wolf.

He looked at her, and he fo