ued
on his way.

As for the wolf-cub, he had long given up all attempts to escape. The
continuous movement, together with the warmth of his captor's body,
produced a soothing effect upon him, and he made no fresh effort to
regain his freedom.

Suddenly, part of a rock on the Indian's right seemed to split and
launch itself into the air, with a rasping, tearing noise between a
growl and a snarl. Quick as a weazel, the Indian leaped aside. The long
fangs, intended for his throat, missed their mark by half an inch, but
struck his shoulder with a clash of meeting bone. Instantly he whipped
out his knife, and stabbed fiercely at his foe. As he did so, the wolf
leaped away. She, in her turn, was the fraction of a second too late.
She snarled as she felt the blade. At the sound of his mother's
unexpected voice, the cub gave a bleating cry. The noise seemed to send
a wave of fury through her. Once more she sprang with eyeballs that
blazed.

But this time the Indian was prepared. He met her savage leap with an
equally savage blow. And as he struck, he let loose the ringing war cry
of his tribe. With a yelp of pain and baffled fury, the she-wolf bounded
aside. The knife had done its deadly work. The searching man-cry had
completed it. Bewildered, terrified, utterly cowed, the great wolf went
bounding up the gorge, bedabbling the ground with blood.

Not till late the following day, weakened with loss of blood and moving
heavily, did she drag herself back to the cubs in the new den. But the
fibres of the mother-heart were firmly-knit within her, and the fibres
of the wolf-race tough. Day by day her strength came back to her; and
day by day the father-wolf, having discovered the new home and seeming
to realize what had happened, brought freshly-killed game to the door of
the den. He did not dare to enter. But the grand old mother dragged her
body painfully to the meat, and the cubs never wanted for a meal.

And within earshot of the new den, as of the old, Little-Sweet-Voice,
the white-throated sparrow, sang his heart out into the sun.

CHAPTER II

WHY "DUSTY STAR" WAS

They called him "Dusty Star" because he happened in the night. All over
the prairies of the immense West you might find here and there, in the
old buffalo times before the White men ploughed, those little circles of
puff-balls that weren't there yesterday and which began under the stars.
"Dusty Stars" the red men called them, in their strange prairi