blood was COMING! It bore down upon them swiftly, fierce and filled
with the blood-lust of hunger. He forgot Neewa. He did not observe the
cub when he slunk back deeper under the windfall. He rose up on his
feet and stood stiff and tense, unconscious of all things but that
thrilling tongue of the hunt-pack.

Wind-broken, his strength failing him, and his eyes wildly searching
the night ahead for the gleam of water that might save him, Ahtik, the
young caribou bull, raced for his life a hundred yards ahead of the
wolves. The pack had already flung itself out in the form of a
horse-shoe, and the two ends were beginning to creep up abreast of
Ahtik, ready to close in for the hamstring--and the kill. In these last
minutes every throat was silent, and the young bull sensed the
beginning of the end. Desperately he turned to the right and plunged
into the forest.

Miki heard the crash of his body and he hugged close to the windfall.
Ten seconds later Ahtik passed within fifty feet of him, a huge and
grotesque form in the moonlight, his coughing breath filled with the
agony and hopelessness of approaching death. As swiftly as he had come
he was gone, and in his place followed half a score of noiseless
shadows passing so quickly that to Miki they were like the coming and
the going of the wind.

For many minutes after that he stood and listened but again silence had
fallen upon the night. After a little he went back into the windfall
and lay down beside Neewa.

Hours that followed he passed in restless snatches of slumber. He
dreamed of things that he had forgotten. He dreamed of Challoner. He
dreamed of chill nights and the big fires; he heard his master's voice
and he felt again the touch of his hand; but over it all and through it
all ran that wild hunting voice of his own kind.

In the early dawn he came out from under the windfall and smelled of
the trail where the wolves and the caribou had passed. Heretofore it
was Neewa who had led in their wandering; now it was Neewa that
followed. His nostrils filled with the heavy scent of the pack, Miki
travelled steadily in the direction of the plain. It took him half an
hour to reach the edge of it. After that he came to a wide and stony
out-cropping of the earth over which he nosed the spoor to a low and
abrupt descent into the wider range of the valley.

Here he stopped.

Twenty feet under him and fifty feet away lay the partly devoured
carcass of the young bull. It was n