All that night he kept close to the hunt-pack, but never quite approached it.  This was fortunate for him.  He still bore the scent of traces, and of man.  The pack would have torn him into pieces.  The first instinct of the wild is that of self-preservation.  It may have been this, a whisper back through the years of savage forebears, that made Kazan roll in the snow now and then where the feet of the pack had trod the thickest.

That night the pack killed a caribou on the edge of the lake, and feasted until nearly dawn.  Kazan hung in the face of the wind.  The smell of blood and of warm flesh tickled his nostrils, and his sharp ears could catch the cracking of bones.  But the instinct was stronger than the temptation.

Not until broad day, when the pack had scattered far and wide over the plain, did he go boldly to the scene of the kill.  He found nothing but an area of blood-reddened snow, covered with bones, entrails and torn bits of tough hide.  But it was enough, and he rolled in it, and buried his nose in what was left, and remained all that day close to it, saturating himself with the scent of it.

That night, when the moon and the stars came out again, he sat back with fear and hesitation no longer in him, and announced himself to his new comrades of the great plain.

The pack hunted again that night, or else it was a new pack that started miles to the south, and came up with a doe caribou to the big frozen lake.  The night was almost as clear as day, and from the edge of the forest Kazan first saw the caribou run out on the lake a third of a mile away.  The pack was about a dozen strong, and had already split into the fatal horseshoe formation, the two leaders running almost abreast of the kill, and slowly closing in.

With a sharp yelp Kazan darted out into the moonlight.  He was directly in the path of the fleeing doe, and bore down upon her with lightning speed.  Two hundred yards away the doe saw him, and swerved to the right, and the leader on that side met her with open jaws.  Kazan was in with the second leader, and leaped at the doe’s soft throat.  In a snarling mass the pack closed in from behind, and the doe went down, with Kazan half under her body, his fangs sunk deep in her jugular.  She lay heavily on him, but he did not lose his hold.  It was his first big kill.  His blood ran like fire.  He snarled between his clamped teeth.

Not until the last quiver had left the body over him did he pull himself out from under her chest and forelegs.  He had killed a rabbit that day and was not hungry.  So he sat back in the snow and waited, while the ravenous pack tore at the dead doe.  After a little he came nearer, nosed in between two of them, and was nipped for his intrusion.

As Kazan drew back, still hesitating to mix with his wild brothers, a big gray form leaped out of the pack and drove straight for his throat.  He had just time to throw his shoulder to the attack, and for a moment the two rolled over and over in the snow.  They were up before the excitement of sudden battle had drawn the pack from the feast.  Slowly they circled about each other, their white fangs bare, their yellowish backs bristling like brushes.  The fatal ring of wolves drew about the fighters.