He did not leave the big plain, and often He took his mate to the top of the ridge, and he would try to tell her what he had left back there.  With the dark nights the call of the woman became so strong upon him that he was filled with a longing to go back, and take Gray Wolf with him.

Something happened very soon after that.  They were crossing the open plain one day when up on the face of the ridge Kazan saw something that made his heart stand still.  A man, with a dog-sledge and team, was coming down into their world.  The wind had not warned them, and suddenly Kazan saw something glisten in the man’s hands.  He knew what it was.  It was the thing that spat fire and thunder, and killed.

He gave his warning to Gray Wolf, and they were off like the wind, side by side.  And then came the sound—­and Kazan’s hatred of men burst forth in a snarl as he leaped.  There was a queer humming over their heads.  The sound from behind came again, and this time Gray Wolf gave a yelp of pain, and rolled over and over in the snow.  She was on her feet again in an instant, and Kazan dropped behind her, and ran there until they reached the shelter of the timber.  Gray Wolf lay down, and began licking the wound in her shoulder.  Kazan faced the ridge.  The man was taking up their trail.  He stopped where Gray Wolf had fallen, and examined the snow.  Then he came on.

Kazan urged Gray Wolf to her feet, and they made for the thick swamp close to the lake.  All that day they kept in the face of the wind, and when Gray Wolf lay down Kazan stole back over their trail, watching and sniffing the air.

For days after that Gray Wolf ran lame, and when once they came upon the remains of an old camp, Kazan’s teeth were bared in snarling hatred of the man-scent that had been left behind.  Growing in him there was a desire for vengeance—­vengeance for his own hurts, and for Gray Wolf’s.  He tried to nose out the man-trail under the cover of fresh snow, and Gray Wolf circled around him anxiously, and tried to lure him deeper into the forest.  At last he followed her sullenly.  There was a savage redness in his eyes.

Three days later the new moon came.  And on the fifth night Kazan struck a trail.  It was fresh—­so fresh that he stopped as suddenly as though struck by a bullet when he ran upon it, and stood with every muscle in his body quivering, and his hair on end.  It was a man-trail.  There were the marks of the sledge, the dogs’ feet, and the snow-shoeprints of his enemy.

Then he threw up his head to the stars, and from his throat there rolled out over the wide plains the hunt-cry—­the wild and savage call for the pack.  Never had he put the savagery in it that was there to-night.  Again and again he sent forth that call, and then there came an answer and another and still another, until Gray Wolf herself sat back on her haunches and added her voice to Kazan’s, and far out on the plain a white and haggard-faced man halted his exhausted dogs to listen, while a voice said faintly from the sledge: