For some minutes after Kazan’s stunned senses had become normal he lay motionless, watching Sandy McTrigger.  Every bone in his body gave him pain.  His jaws were sore and bleeding.  His upper lip was smashed where the club had fallen.  One eye was almost closed.  Several times Sandy came near, much pleased at what he regarded as the good results of the beating.  Each time he brought the club.  The third time he prodded Kazan with it, and the dog snarled and snapped savagely at the end of it.  That was what Sandy wanted—­it was an old trick of the dog-slaver.  Instantly he was using the club again, until with a whining cry Kazan slunk under the protection of the snag to which he was fastened.  He could scarcely drag himself.  His right forepaw was smashed.  His hindquarters sank under him.  For a time after this second beating he could not have escaped had he been free.

Sandy was in unusually good humor.

“I’ll take the devil out of you all right,” he told Kazan for the twentieth time.  “There’s nothin’ like beatin’s to make dogs an’ wimmin live up to the mark.  A month from now you’ll be worth two hundred dollars or I’ll skin you alive!”

Three or four times before dusk Sandy worked to rouse Kazan’s animosity.  But there was no longer any desire left in Kazan to fight.  His two terrific beatings, and the crushing blow of the bullet against his skull, had made him sick.  He lay with his head between his forepaws, his eyes closed, and did not see McTrigger.  He paid no attention to the meat that was thrown under his nose.  He did not know when the last of the sun sank behind the western forests, or when the darkness came.  But at last something roused him from his stupor.  To his dazed and sickened brain it came like a call from out of the far past, and he raised his head and listened.  Out on the sand McTrigger had built a fire, and the man stood in the red glow of it now, facing the dark shadows beyond the shoreline.  He, too, was listening.  What had roused Kazan came again now—­the lost mourning cry of Gray Wolf far out on the plain.

With a whine Kazan was on his feet, tugging at the babiche.  Sandy snatched up his club, and leaped toward him.

“Down, you brute!” he commanded.

In the firelight the club rose and fell with ferocious quickness.  When McTrigger returned to the fire he was breathing hard again.  He tossed his club beside the blankets he had spread out for a bed.  It was a different looking club now.  It was covered with blood and hair.

“Guess that’ll take the spirit out of him,” he chuckled.  “It’ll do that—­or kill ’im!”