narled and faced the fire; and Gray
Wolf's own tribe--the wolves--dared take no deeper step than she.

Dripping and panting, and half choked by heat and smoke, Kazan came to
Gray Wolf's side. There was but one refuge left near them, and that was
the sand-bar. It reached out for fifty feet into the stream. Quickly he
led his blind mate toward it. As they came through the low bush to the
river-bed, something stopped them both. To their nostrils had come the
scent of a deadlier enemy than fire. A lynx had taken possession of the
sand-bar, and was crouching at the end of it. Three porcupines had
dragged themselves into the edge of the water, and lay there like balls,
their quills alert and quivering. A fisher-cat was snarling at the lynx.
And the lynx, with ears laid back, watched Kazan and Gray Wolf as they
began the invasion of the sand-bar.

Faithful Gray Wolf was full of fight, and she sprang shoulder to
shoulder with Kazan, her fangs bared. With an angry snap, Kazan drove
her back, and she stood quivering and whining while he advanced.
Light-footed, his pointed ears forward, no menace or threat in his
attitude, he advanced. It was the deadly advance of the husky trained
in battle, skilled in the art of killing. A man from civilization would
have said that the dog was approaching the lynx with friendly
intentions. But the lynx understood. It was the old feud of many
generations--made deadlier now by Kazan's memory of that night at the
top of the Sun Rock.

Instinct told the fisher-cat what was coming, and it crouched low and
flat; the porcupines, scolding like little children at the presence of
enemies and the thickening clouds of smoke, thrust their quills still
more erect. The lynx lay on its belly, like a cat, its hindquarters
twitching, and gathered for the spring. Kazan's feet seemed scarcely to
touch the sand as he circled lightly around it. The lynx pivoted as he
circled, and then it shot in a round snarling ball over the eight feet
of space that separated them.

Kazan did not leap aside. He made no effort to escape the attack, but
met it fairly with the full force of his shoulders, as sledge-dog meets
sledge-dog. He was ten pounds heavier than the lynx, and for a moment
the big loose-jointed cat with its twenty knife-like claws was thrown
on its side. Like a flash Kazan took advantage of the moment, and drove
for the back of the cat's neck.

In that same moment blind Gray Wolf leaped in with a snarling cry,