Only the thickness of hair and hide on the back of Kazan’s neck, and the toughness of his muscles, saved him from that terrible fate of the vanquished.  The wolf’s teeth sank deep, but not deep enough to reach the vital spot, and suddenly Kazan put every ounce of strength in his limbs to the effort, and flung himself up bodily from under his antagonist.  The grip on his neck relaxed, and with another rearing leap he tore himself free.

As swift as a whip-lash he whirled on the broken-legged leader of the pack and with the full rush and weight of his shoulders struck him fairly in the side.  More deadly than the throat-grip had Kazan sometimes found the lunge when delivered at the right moment.  It was deadly now.  The big gray wolf lost his feet, rolled upon his back for an instant, and the pack rushed in, eager to rend the last of life from the leader whose power had ceased to exist.

From out of that gray, snarling, bloody-lipped mass, Kazan drew back, panting and bleeding.  He was weak.  There was a curious sickness in his head.  He wanted to lie down in the snow.  But the old and infallible instinct warned him not to betray that weakness.  From out of the pack a slim, lithe, gray she-wolf came up to him, and lay down in the snow before him, and then rose swiftly and sniffed at his wounds.

She was young and strong and beautiful, but Kazan did not look at her.  Where the fight had been he was looking, at what little remained of the old leader.  The pack had returned to the feast.  He heard again the cracking of bones and the rending of flesh, and something told him that hereafter all the wilderness would hear and recognize his voice, and that when he sat back on his haunches and called to the moon and the stars, those swift-footed hunters of the big plain would respond to it.  He circled twice about the caribou and the pack, and then trotted off to the edge of the black spruce forest.

When he reached the shadows he looked back.  Gray Wolf was following him.  She was only a few yards behind.  And now she came up to him, a little timidly, and she, too, looked back to the dark blotch of life out on the lake.  And as she stood there close beside him, Kazan sniffed at something in the air that was not the scent of blood, nor the perfume of the balsam and spruce.  It was a thing that seemed to come to him from the clear stars, the cloudless moon, the strange and beautiful quiet of the night itself.  And its presence seemed to be a part of Gray Wolf.

He looked at her, and he found Gray Wolf’s eyes alert and questioning.  She was young—­so young that she seemed scarcely to have passed out of puppyhood.  Her body was strong and slim and beautifully shaped.  In the moonlight the hair under her throat and along her back shone sleek and soft.  She whined at the red staring light in Kazan’s eyes, and it was not a puppy’s whimper.  Kazan moved toward her, and stood with his head over her back, facing the pack.  He felt her trembling against his chest.  He looked at the moon and the stars again, the mystery of Gray Wolf and of the night throbbing in his blood.