It was not new to Kazan.  A dozen times he had sat in rings like this, waiting for the final moment.  More than once he had fought for his life within the circle.  It was the sledge-dog way of fighting.  Unless man interrupted with a club or a whip it always ended in death.  Only one fighter could come out alive.  Sometimes both died.  And there was no man here—­only that fatal cordon of waiting white-fanged demons, ready to leap upon and tear to pieces the first of the fighters who was thrown upon his side or back.  Kazan was a stranger, but he did not fear those that hemmed him in.  The one great law of the pack would compel them to be fair.

He kept his eyes only on the big gray leader who had challenged him.  Shoulder to shoulder they continued to circle.  Where a few moments before there had been the snapping of jaws and the rending of flesh there was now silence.  Soft-footed and soft-throated mongrel dogs from the South would have snarled and growled, but Kazan and the wolf were still, their ears laid forward instead of back, their tails free and bushy.

Suddenly the wolf struck in with the swiftness of lightning, and his jaws came together with the sharpness of steel striking steel.  They missed by an inch.  In that same instant Kazan darted in to the side, and like knives his teeth gashed the wolf’s flank.

They circled again, their eyes growing redder, their lips drawn back until they seemed to have disappeared.  And then Kazan leaped for that death-grip at the throat—­and missed.  It was only by an inch again, and the wolf came back, as he had done, and laid open Kazan’s flank so that the blood ran down his leg and reddened the snow.  The burn of that flank-wound told Kazan that his enemy was old in the game of fighting.  He crouched low, his head straight out, and his throat close to the snow.  It was a trick Kazan had learned in puppyhood—­to shield his throat, and wait.

Twice the wolf circled about him, and Kazan pivoted slowly, his eyes half closed.  A second time the wolf leaped, and Kazan threw up his terrible jaws, sure of that fatal grip just in front of the forelegs.  His teeth snapped on empty air.  With the nimbleness of a cat the wolf had gone completely over his back.

The trick had failed, and with a rumble of the dog-snarl in his throat, Kazan reached the wolf in a single bound.  They met breast to breast.  Their fangs clashed and with the whole weight of his body, Kazan flung himself against the wolf’s shoulders, cleared his jaws, and struck again for the throat hold.  It was another miss—­by a hair’s breadth—­and before he could recover, the wolf’s teeth were buried in the back of his neck.

For the first time in his life Kazan felt the terror and the pain of the death-grip, and with a mighty effort he flung his head a little forward and snapped blindly.  His powerful jaws closed on the wolf’s foreleg, close to the body.  There was a cracking of bone and a crunching of flesh, and the circle of waiting wolves grew tense and alert.  One or the other of the fighters was sure to go down before the holds were broken, and they but awaited that fatal fall as a signal to leap in to the death.