Now, he did it seriously, as a thing that mattered enormously: he
danced with his very soul.

And as he danced, apparently oblivious of everything except his own
movements, he felt the wolf-mind surge towards him, like waters under
the wind.

They were coming! They were coming! The wolf-tide was rising within him,
without him. The moon drew it, the dance, the wild notes that sobbed and
gasped in his throat! They could not help themselves any more than he
could help himself. They were driven by a power stronger than
themselves. As he danced he saw the great ring of dusky bodies, and
glimmering eyes--the white wolf and Kiopo in the centre--saw them as one
sees things in a dream.

The wolves watched him as if spellbound. Then one on the outside of the
circle threw back his head and howled. Another answered him from the
opposite side. A third took up the call. Soon the whole pack was giving
tongue; and one of the big wolf choruses went thundering out for leagues
along the hollow land.

But to give tongue was not enough. The madness that was in Dusty Star's
body seemed to bite into the bodies of the wolves. Some strange power
moved them. The mysterious restlessness that had stirred the
wolf-kindred since the beginning of the world came upon them now with an
irresistible force. First one, and then another, began to run about and
bark. The movement spread. It was not long before the entire pack was in
violent motion, running and leaping in continuous circles, narrower and
wider as the impulse came.

It was like a storm of wolf bodies, the centre of which was Kiopo and
the White Wolf.

All this time neither Kiopo nor the White Wolf had moved. But upon them
also the mysterious power grew. All at once, as if by a swift agreement,
they sprang into the air, and joined Dusty Star in his Dance.

And now, as if a barrier had been suddenly withdrawn, like surging
waters breaking over a dam, the wolves poured from all sides into the
ring.

There was no thought now of attacking either Dusty Star or his wolf. The
boy's sudden action had certainly saved their lives; for the wolves had
recognized in him a mysterious power which, unfamiliar as it was,
claimed kinship with the pack.

If any human eyes had been watching from a neighbouring butte they would
have seen an unaccountable sight. In the haunted stillness of the Bad
Lands, beneath the white glare of an enormous prairie moon, the wolves
danced a stormy movement about the y