Kazan flew across the rock.  His attack was the swift silent assault of the wolf, combined with the greater courage, the fury and the strategy of the husky.  Another husky would have died in that first attack.  But the lynx was not a dog or a wolf.  It was “Mow-lee, the swift,” as the Sarcees had named it—­the quickest creature in the wilderness.  Kazan’s inch-long fangs should have sunk deep in its jugular.  But in a fractional part of a second the lynx had thrown itself back like a huge soft ball, and Kazan’s teeth buried themselves in the flesh of its neck instead of the jugular.  And Kazan was not now fighting the fangs of a wolf in the pack, or of another husky.  He was fighting claws—­claws that ripped like twenty razor-edged knives, and which even a jugular hold could not stop.

Once he had fought a lynx in a trap, and he had not forgotten the lesson the battle had taught him.  He fought to pull the lynx down, instead of forcing it on its back, as he would have done with another dog or a wolf.  He knew that when on its back the fierce cat was most dangerous.  One rip of its powerful hindfeet could disembowel him.

Behind him he heard Gray Wolf sobbing and crying, and he knew that she was terribly hurt.  He was filled with the rage and strength of two dogs, and his teeth met through the flesh and hide of the cat’s throat.  But the big lynx escaped death by half an inch.  It would take a fresh grip to reach the jugular, and suddenly Kazan made the deadly lunge.  There was an instant’s freedom for the lynx, and in that moment it flung itself back, and Kazan gripped at its throat—­on top.

The cat’s claws ripped through his flesh, cutting open his side—­a little too high to kill.  Another stroke and they would have cut to his vitals.  But they had struggled close to the edge of the rock wall, and suddenly, without a snarl or a cry, they rolled over.  It was fifty or sixty feet to the rocks of the ledge below, and even as they pitched over and over in the fall, Kazan’s teeth sank deeper.  They struck with terrific force, Kazan uppermost.  The shock sent him half a dozen feet from his enemy.  He was up like a flash, dizzy, snarling, on the defensive.  The lynx lay limp and motionless where it had fallen.  Kazan came nearer, still prepared, and sniffed cautiously.  Something told him that the fight was over.  He turned and dragged himself slowly along the ledge to the trail, and returned to Gray Wolf.

Gray Wolf was no longer in the moonlight.  Close to the two rocks lay the limp and lifeless little bodies of the three pups.  The lynx had torn them to pieces.  With a whine of grief Kazan approached the two boulders and thrust his head between them.  Gray Wolf was there, crying to herself in that terrible sobbing way.  He went in, and began to lick her bleeding shoulders and head.  All the rest of that night she whimpered with pain.  With dawn she dragged herself out to the lifeless little bodies on the rock.