Not much of his life had been spent at the posts.  Most of it had been on the trail—­in the traces—­and the spirit of the mating season had only stirred him from afar.  But it was very near now.  Gray Wolf lifted her head.  Her soft muzzle touched the wound on his neck, and in the gentleness of that touch, in the low sound in her throat, Kazan felt and heard again that wonderful something that had come with the caress of the woman’s hand and the sound of her voice.

He turned, whining, his back bristling, his head high and defiant of the wilderness which he faced.  Gray Wolf trotted close at his side as they entered into the gloom of the forest.

CHAPTER V

THE FIGHT IN THE SNOW

They found shelter that night under thick balsam, and when they lay down on the soft carpet of needles which the snow had not covered, Gray Wolf snuggled her warm body close to Kazan and licked his wounds.  The day broke with a velvety fall of snow, so white and thick that they could not see a dozen leaps ahead of them in the open.  It was quite warm, and so still that the whole world seemed filled with only the flutter and whisper of the snowflakes.  Through this day Kazan and Gray Wolf traveled side by side.  Time and again he turned his head back to the ridge over which he had come, and Gray Wolf could not understand the strange note that trembled in his throat.

In the afternoon they returned to what was left of the caribou doe on the lake.  In the edge of the forest Gray Wolf hung back.  She did not yet know the meaning of poison-baits, deadfalls and traps, but the instinct of numberless generations was in her veins, and it told her there was danger in visiting a second time a thing that had grown cold in death.

Kazan had seen masters work about carcasses that the wolves had left.  He had seen them conceal traps cleverly, and roll little capsules of strychnine in the fat of the entrails, and once he had put a foreleg in a trap, and had experienced its sting and pain and deadly grip.  But he did not have Gray Wolf’s fear.  He urged her to accompany him to the white hummocks on the ice, and at last she went with him and sank back restlessly on her haunches, while he dug out the bones and pieces of flesh that the snow had kept from freezing.  But she would not eat, and at last Kazan went and sat on his haunches at her side, and with her looked at what he had dug out from under the snow.  He sniffed the air.  He could not smell danger, but Gray Wolf told him that it might be there.

She told him many other things in the days and nights that followed.  The third night Kazan himself gathered the hunt-pack and led in the chase.  Three times that month, before the moon left the skies, he led the chase, and each time there was a kill.  But as the snows began to grow softer under his feet he found a greater and greater companionship in Gray Wolf, and they hunted alone, living on the big white rabbits.  In all the world he had loved but two things, the girl with the shining hair and the hands that had caressed him—­and Gray Wolf.