n instant
stupefied. Then he swung down from the tree as Kazan leaped upon him.
Over and over they rolled to the edge of the bank, carried on by the
dog's momentum. In another moment the thick heavy body of the beaver had
slipped like oil from under Kazan and Broken Tooth was safe in his
element, two holes bitten clean through his fleshy tail. Baffled in his
effort to get a death-hold on Broken Tooth, Kazan swung like a flash to
the right. The young beavers had not moved. Astonished and frightened at
what they had seen, they stood as if stupefied. Not until they saw Kazan
tearing toward them did they awaken to action. Three of them reached the
water. The fourth and fifth--baby beavers not more than three months
old--were too late. With a single snap of his jaw Kazan broke the hack
of one. The other he pinned down by the throat and shook as a terrier
shakes a rat. When Gray Wolf trotted down to him both of the little
beavers were dead. She sniffed at their soft little bodies and whined.
Perhaps the baby creatures reminded her of runaway Ba-ree, her own baby,
for there was a note of longing in her whine as she nosed them. It was
the mother whine.

But if Gray Wolf had visions of her own Kazan understood nothing of
them. He had killed two of the creatures that had dared to invade their
home. To the little beavers he had been as merciless as the gray lynx
that had murdered Gray Wolf's first children on the top of the Sun Rock.
Now that he had sunk his teeth into the flesh of his enemies his blood
was filled with a frenzied desire to kill. He raved along the edge of
the pond, snarling at the uneasy water under which Broken Tooth had
disappeared. All of the beavers had taken refuge in the pond, and its
surface was heaving with the passing of many bodies beneath. Kazan came
to the end of the dam. This was new. Instinctively he knew that it was
the work of Broken Tooth and his tribe and for a few moments he tore
fiercely at the matted sticks and limbs. Suddenly there was an upheaval
of water close to the dam, fifty feet out from the bank, and Broken
Tooth's big gray head appeared. For a tense half minute Broken Tooth and
Kazan measured each other at that distance. Then Broken Tooth drew his
wet shining body out of the water to the top of the dam, and squatted
flat, facing Kazan. The old patriarch was alone. Not another beaver had
shown himself.

The surface of the pond had now become quiet. Vainly Kazan tried to
discover a fo