d once been his and the call of blood made him for a
time forget. And only Gray Wolf, with that wonderful super-instinct
which nature was giving her in place of her lost sight, foresaw the end
to which it was leading him.

Each day the temperature continued to rise until when the sun was
warmest the snow began to thaw a little. This was two weeks after the
fight near the bull. Gradually the pack had swung eastward, until it was
now fifty miles east and twenty miles south of the old home under the
windfall. More than ever Gray Wolf began to long for their old nest
under the fallen trees. Again with those first promises of spring in
sunshine and air, there was coming also for the second time in her life
the promise of approaching motherhood.

But her efforts to draw Kazan back were unavailing, and in spite of her
protest he wandered each day a little farther east and south at the head
of his pack.

Instinct impelled the four huskies to move in that direction. They had
not yet been long enough a part of the wild to forget the necessity of
man and in that direction there was man. In that direction, and not far
from them now, was the Hudson Bay Company's post to which they and their
dead master owed their allegiance. Kazan did not know this, but one day
something happened to bring back visions and desires that widened still
more the gulf between him and Gray Wolf.

They had come to the cap of a ridge when something stopped them. It was
a man's voice crying shrilly that word of long ago that had so often
stirred the blood in Kazan's own veins--"_m'hoosh! m'hoosh!
m'hoosh!"_--and from the ridge they looked down upon the open space of
the plain, where a team of six dogs was trotting ahead of a sledge, with
a man running behind them, urging them on at every other step with that
cry of "_m'hoosh! m'hoosh! m'hoosh!"_

Trembling and undecided, the four huskies and the wolf-dog stood on the
ridge with Gray Wolf cringing behind them. Not until man and dogs and
sledge had disappeared did they move, and then they trotted down to the
trail and sniffed at it whiningly and excitedly. For a mile or two they
followed it, Kazan and his mates going fearlessly in the trail. Gray
Wolf hung back, traveling twenty yards to the right of them, with the
hot man-scent driving the blood feverishly through her brain. Only her
love for Kazan--and the faith she still had in him--kept her that near.

At the edge of a swamp Kazan halted and turned aw