right here!"

"Well, seein' as it's you, I don't want no more'n what his pelt'ld
fetch, an' the bounty on his nose," answered the trapper.

"All right," said Kane. "You wait here a bit, will you, an' keep him
amused so's he won't gnaw his paw off; an' I'll run back to the
Cross-Roads and get some rope and things I guess I'll be needing."

When he got back with rope, straps, a big mastiff-muzzle, and a
toboggan, he found Dave in a very bad humor, and calling the
watchful, silent, crouching beast hard names. In his efforts to amuse
himself by stirring that imperturbable and sinister quiet into action,
he had come just within the range of the Gray Master's spring. Swift
as that spring was, that of the alert backwoodsman was just swift
enough to elude it--in part. Dave's own hide had escaped, but his
heavy jacket of homespun had had the back ripped clean out of it.

But now, for all his matchless strength, courage, and craft, the Gray
Master's game was played out. The fickle Fates of the wild had
pronounced against him. He could not parry two flying nooses at once.
And presently, having been choked for a few moments into
unconsciousness, he awoke to find himself bound so that he could not
move a leg, and his mighty jaws imprisoned in a strange cage of straps
and steel. He was tied upon the toboggan, and being dragged swiftly
through the forest--that free forest of which he had so long felt
himself master--at the heels of his two conquerors. His only poor
consolation was that the hideous, crunching thing had been removed
from his bleeding paw, which, however, anguished cruelly for the
soothing of his tongue.

CHAPTER II

During the strenuous and dangerous weeks while Kane was gaoler to his
dreaded captive, his respect for the grim beast's tameless spirit by
no means diminished; but he had no shadow of misgiving as to the
future to which he destined his victim. He felt that in sending the
incomparable wolf to the gardens, where he would be well cared for,
and at the same time an educative influence, he was being both just
and kind. And it was with feelings of unmixed delight that he received
a formal resolution of gratitude from the zoological society for his
valued and in some respects unique donation.

It was about a year and a half later that Kane had occasion to revisit
the city of his Alma Mater. As soon as possible he hurried to inspect
the little gardens, which had already marched so far towards succes