roam, and after a time she
moved restlessly about in a small circle on the plain, and sent out her
first inquiring call for Kazan. Up from the river came the pungent odor
of smoke, and instinctively she knew that it was this smoke, and the
nearness of man, that was keeping Kazan from her. But she went no nearer
than that first circle made by her padded feet. Blindness had taught her
to wait. Since the day of the battle on the Sun Rock, when the lynx had
destroyed her eyes, Kazan had never failed her. Three times she called
for him in the early night. Then she made herself a nest under a
_banskian_ shrub, and waited until dawn.

Just how she knew when night blotted out the last glow of the sun, so
without seeing she knew when day came. Not until she felt the warmth of
the sun on her back did her anxiety overcome her caution. Slowly she
moved toward the river, sniffing the air and whining. There was no
longer the smell of smoke in the air, and she could not catch the scent
of man. She followed her own trail back to the sand-bar, and in the
fringe of thick bush overhanging the white shore of the stream she
stopped and listened. After a little she scrambled down and went
straight to the spot where she and Kazan were drinking when the shot
came. And there her nose struck the sand still wet and thick with
Kazan's blood. She knew it was the blood of her mate, for the scent of
him was all about her in the sand, mingled with the man-smell of Sandy
McTrigger. She sniffed the trail of his body to the edge of the stream,
where Sandy had dragged him to the canoe. She found the fallen tree to
which he had been tied. And then she came upon one of the two clubs that
Sandy had used to beat wounded Kazan into submissiveness. It was covered
with blood and hair, and all at once Gray Wolf lay back on her haunches
and turned her blind face to the sky, and there rose from her throat a
cry for Kazan that drifted for miles on the wings of the south wind.
Never had Gray Wolf given quite that cry before. It was not the "call"
that comes with the moonlit nights, and neither was it the hunt-cry, nor
the she-wolf's yearning for matehood. It carried with it the lament of
death. And after that one cry Gray Wolf slunk back to the fringe of bush
over the river, and lay with her face turned to the stream.

A strange terror fell upon her. She had grown accustomed to darkness,
but never before had she been _alone_ in that darkness. Always there
had been t