ugh. That so individual a beast should
have its career cut short by an angry settler's bullet, to avenge a
few ordinary pigs or sheep, was a thing he could hardly contemplate
with patience. To scatter the pack would be to rob the Quah-Davic
solitudes of half their romance. He determined to devote himself to a
study of the great wolf's personality and characteristics, and to
foil, as far as this could be done without making himself unpopular,
such plots as might be laid for the beast's undoing.

Recognizing, however, that this friendly interest might not be
reciprocated, Kane chose his rifle rather than his camera as a weapon,
on those stinging, blue-white nights when he went forth to seek
knowledge of the gray wolf's ways. His rifle was a well-tried
repeating Winchester, and he carried a light, short-handled axe in his
belt besides the regulation knife; so he had no serious misgivings as
he trod the crackling, moonlit snow beneath the moose-hide webbing of
his snowshoes. But not being utterly foolhardy, he kept to the open
stretches of meadow, or river-bed, or snow-buried lake, rather than in
the close shadows of the forest.

But now, when he was so expectant, the wolf-pack seemed to find
business elsewhere. For nights not a howl had been heard, not a fresh
track found, within miles of Burnt Brook Cross-Roads. Then,
remembering that a watched pot takes long to boil, Kane took
fishing-lines and bait, and went up the wide, white brook-bed to the
deep lake in the hills, whence it launches its shallow flood towards
the Quah-Davic. He took with him also for companionship, since this
time he was not wolf-hunting, a neighbor's dog that was forever after
him--a useless, yellow lump of mongrel dog-flesh, but friendly and
silent. After building a hasty shelter of spruce boughs some distance
out from shore in the flooding light, he chopped holes through the ice
and fell to fishing for the big lake trout that inhabited those deep
waters. He had luck. And soon, absorbed in the new excitement, he had
forgotten all about the great gray wolf.

It was late, for Kane had slept the early part of the night, waiting
for moonrise before starting on his expedition. The air was tingling
with windless cold, and ghostly white with the light of a crooked,
waning moon. Suddenly, without a sound, the dog crept close against
Kane's legs. Kane felt him tremble. Looking up sharply, his eyes fell
on a tall, gray form, sitting erect on the tip of a n