“The wolves, father.  Are they coming—­after us?”

The man was silent.  He was not young.  The moon shone in his long white beard, and added grotesquely to the height of his tall gaunt figure.  A girl had raised her head from a bearskin pillow on the sleigh.  Her dark eyes were filled beautifully with the starlight.  She was pale.  Her hair fell in a thick shining braid over her shoulder, and she was hugging something tightly to her breast.

“They’re on the trail of something—­probably a deer,” said the man, looking at the breech of his rifle.  “Don’t worry, Jo.  We’ll stop at the next bit of scrub and see if we can’t find enough dry stuff for a fire.—­Wee-ah-h-h-h, boys!  Koosh—­koosh—­” and he snapped his whip over the backs of his team.

From the bundle at the girl’s breast there came a small wailing cry.  And far back in the plain there answered it the scattered voice of the pack.

At last Kazan was on the trail of vengeance.  He ran slowly at first, with Gray Wolf close beside him, pausing every three or four hundred yards to send forth the cry.  A gray leaping form joined them from behind.  Another followed.  Two came in from the side, and Kazan’s solitary howl gave place to the wild tongue of the pack.  Numbers grew, and with increasing number the pace became swifter.  Four—­six—­seven—­ten—­fourteen, by the time the more open and wind-swept part of the plain was reached.

It was a strong pack, filled with old and fearless hunters.  Gray Wolf was the youngest, and she kept close to Kazan’s shoulders.  She could see nothing of his red-shot eyes and dripping jaws, and would not have understood if she had seen.  But she could feel and she was thrilled by the spirit of that strange and mysterious savagery that had made Kazan forget all things but hurt and death.

The pack made no sound.  There was only the panting of breath and the soft fall of many feet.  They ran swiftly and close.  And always Kazan was a leap ahead, with Gray Wolf nosing his shoulder.

Never had he wanted to kill as he felt the desire in him to kill now.  For the first time he had no fear of man, no fear of the club, of the whip, or of the thing that blazed forth fire and death.  He ran more swiftly, in order to overtake them and give them battle sooner.  All of the pent-up madness of four years of slavery and abuse at the hands of men broke loose in thin red streams of fire in his veins, and when at last he saw a moving blotch far out on the plain ahead of him, the cry that came out of his throat was one that Gray Wolf did not understand.

Three hundred yards beyond that moving blotch was the thin line of timber, and Kazan and his followers bore down swiftly.  Half-way to the timber they were almost upon it, and suddenly it stopped and became a black and motionless shadow on the snow.  From out of it there leaped that lightning tongue of flame that Kazan had always dreaded, and he heard the hissing song of the death-bee over his head.  He did not mind it now.  He yelped sharply, and the wolves raced in until four of them were neck-and-neck with him.