ied, and they
had taken to the forests. They still bore signs of the sledge-traces.
About their necks were moose-hide collars. The hair was worn short at
their flanks, and one still dragged after him three feet of corded
babiche trace. Their eyes gleamed red and hungry in the glow of the moon
and the stars. They were thin, and gaunt and starved, and Kazan suddenly
turned and trotted ahead of them to the side of the dead bull. Then he
fell back and sat proudly on his haunches beside Gray Wolf, listening to
the snapping of jaws and the rending of flesh as the starved pack
feasted.

Gray Wolf slunk closer to Kazan. She muzzled his neck and Kazan gave her
a swift dog-like caress of his tongue, assuring her that all was well.
She flattened herself in the snow when the dogs had finished and came up
in their dog way to sniff at her, and make closer acquaintance with
Kazan. Kazan towered over her, guarding her. One huge red-eyed dog who
still dragged the bit of babiche trace muzzled Gray Wolf's soft neck for
a fraction of a second too long, and Kazan uttered a savage snarl of
warning. The dog drew back, and for a moment their fangs gleamed over
Gray Wolf's blind face. It was the Challenge of the Breed.

The big husky was the leader of the pack, and if one of the other dogs
had snarled at him, as Kazan snarled he would have leaped at his throat.
But in Kazan, standing fierce and half wild over Gray Wolf, he
recognized none of the serfdom of the sledge-dogs. It was master facing
master; in Kazan it was more than that for he was Gray Wolf's mate. In
an instant more he would have leaped over her body to have fought for
her, more than for the right of leadership. But the big husky turned
away sullenly, growling, still snarling, and vented his rage by nipping
fiercely at the flank of one of his sledge-mates.

Gray Wolf understood what had happened, though she could not see. She
shrank closer to Kazan. She knew that the moon and the stars had looked
down on that thing that always meant death--the challenge to the right
of mate. With her luring coyness, whining and softly muzzling his
shoulder and neck, she tried to draw Kazan away from the pad-beaten
circle in which the bull lay. Kazan's answer was an ominous rolling of
smothered thunder deep down in his throat. He lay down beside her,
licked her blind face swiftly, and faced the stranger dogs.

The moon sank lower and lower and at last dropped behind the western
forests. The star