After this Kazan went down to the creek and buried his burning muzzle in the cold water.  This gave him some relief, but only for a short time.  The quills that remained worked their way deeper and deeper into his flesh, like living things.  Nose and lips began to swell.  Blood and saliva dripped from his mouth and his eyes grew red.  Two hours after Gray Wolf had retired to her nest under the windfall a quill had completely pierced his lip and began to prick his tongue.  In desperation Kazan chewed viciously upon a piece of wood.  This broke and crumpled the quill, and destroyed its power to do further harm.  Nature had told him the one thing to do to save himself.  Most of that day he spent in gnawing at wood and crunching mouthfuls of earth and mold between his jaws.  In this way the barb-toothed points of the quills were dulled and broken as they came through.  At dusk he crawled under the windfall, and Gray Wolf gently licked his muzzle with her soft cool tongue.  Frequently during the night Kazan went to the creek and found relief in its ice-cold water.

The next day he had what the forest people call “porcupine mumps.”  His face was swollen until Gray Wolf would have laughed if she had been human, and not blind.  His chops bulged like cushions.  His eyes were mere slits.  When he went out into the day he blinked, for he could see scarcely better than his sightless mate.  But the pain was mostly gone.  The night that followed he began to think of hunting, and the next morning before it was yet dawn he brought a rabbit into their den.  A few hours later he would have brought a spruce partridge to Gray Wolf, but just as he was about to spring upon his feathered prey the soft chatter of a porcupine a few yards away brought him to a sudden stop.  Few things could make Kazan drop his tail.  But that inane and incoherent prattle of the little spiked beast sent him off at double-quick with his tail between his legs.  As man abhors and evades the creeping serpent, so Kazan would hereafter evade this little creature of the forests that never in animal history has been known to lose its good-humor or pick a quarrel.

Two weeks of lengthening days, of increasing warmth, of sunshine and hunting, followed Kazan’s adventure with the porcupine.  The last of the snow went rapidly.  Out of the earth began to spring tips of green.  The bakneesh vine glistened redder each day, the poplar buds began to split, and in the sunniest spots, between the rocks of the ridges the little white snow-flowers began to give a final proof that spring had come.  For the first of those two weeks Gray Wolf hunted frequently with Kazan.  They did not go far.  The swamp was alive with small game and each day or night they killed fresh meat.  After the first week Gray Wolf hunted less.  Then came the soft and balmy night, glorious in the radiance of a full spring moon when she refused to leave the windfall.  Kazan did not urge her.  Instinct made him understand, and he did not go far from the windfall that night in his hunt.  When he returned he brought a rabbit.