she feared. For three summers she had not caught the taint in
her nostrils and she had almost forgotten its existence. Now, so
suddenly that it paralyzed her, it was warm and terrible in the breath
of the wind.

In this moment, too, Neewa seemed to sense the nearness of an appalling
danger. Two hundred yards from Challoner he stood a motionless blotch
of jet against the white of the sand about him, his eyes on his mother,
and his sensitive little nose trying to catch the meaning of the menace
in the air.

Then came a thing he had never heard before--a splitting, cracking
roar--something that was almost like thunder and yet unlike it; and he
saw his mother lurch where she stood and crumple down all at once on
her fore legs.

The next moment she was up, with a wild WHOOF in her voice that was new
to him--a warning for him to fly for his life.

Like all mothers who have known the comradeship and love of a child,
Noozak's first thought was of him. Reaching out a paw she gave him a
sudden shove, and Neewa legged it wildly for the near-by shelter of the
timber. Noozak followed. A second shot came, and close over her head
there sped a purring, terrible sound. But Noozak did not hurry. She
kept behind Neewa, urging him on even as that pain of a red-hot iron in
her groin filled her with agony. They came to the edge of the timber as
Challoner's third shot bit under Noozak's feet.

A moment more and they were within the barricade of the timber.
Instinct guided Neewa into the thickest part of it, and close behind
him Noozak fought with the last of her dying strength to urge him on.
In her old brain there was growing a deep and appalling shadow,
something that was beginning to cloud her vision so that she could not
see, and she knew that at last she had come to the uttermost end of her
trail. With twenty years of life behind her, she struggled now for a
last few seconds. She stopped Neewa close to a thick cedar, and as she
had done many times before she commanded him to climb it. Just once her
hot tongue touched his face in a final caress. Then she turned to fight
her last great fight.

Straight into the face of Challoner she dragged herself, and fifty feet
from the spruce she stopped and waited for him, her head drooped
between her shoulders, her sides heaving, her eyes dimming more and
more, until at last she sank down with a great sigh, barring the trail
of their enemy. For a space, it may be, she saw once more the golden