Like a red ribbon the trail ran back through the wilderness.  The little swift-moving ermine were everywhere this night, looking like white rats as they dodged about in the moonlight.  They were first to find the trail, and with all the ferocity of their blood-eating nature followed it with quick exciting leaps.  A fox caught the scent of it a quarter of a mile to windward, and came nearer.  From out of a deep windfall a beady-eyed, thin-bellied fisher-cat came forth, and stopped with his feet in the crimson ribbon.

It was the fisher-cat that brought Kazan out; from under his cover of spruce again.  In the moonlight there was a sharp quick fight, a snarling and scratching, a cat-like yowl of pain, and the fisher forgot his hunger in flight.  Kazan returned to Gray Wolf with a lacerated and bleeding nose.  Gray Wolf licked it sympathetically, while Kazan stood rigid and listening.

The fox swung swiftly away with the wind, warned by the sounds of conflict.  He was not a fighter, but a murderer who killed from behind, and a little later he leaped upon an owl and tore it into bits for the half-pound of flesh within the mass of feathers.

But nothing could drive back those little white outlaws of the wilderness—­the ermine.  They would have stolen between the feet of man to get at the warm flesh and blood of the freshly killed bull.  Kazan hunted them savagely.  They were too quick for him, more like elusive flashes in the moonlight than things of life.  They burrowed under the old bull’s body and fed while he raved and filled his mouth with snow.  Gray Wolf sat placidly on her haunches.  The little ermine did not trouble her, and after a time Kazan realized this, and flung himself down beside her, panting and exhausted.

For a long time after that the night was almost unbroken by sound.  Once in the far distance there came the cry of a wolf, and now and then, to punctuate the deathly silence, the snow owl hooted in blood-curdling protest from his home in the spruce-tops.  The moon was straight above the old bull when Gray Wolf scented the first real danger.  Instantly she gave the warning to Kazan and faced the bloody trail, her lithe body quivering, her fangs gleaming in the starlight, a snarling whine in her throat.  Only in the face of their deadliest enemy, the lynx—­the terrible fighter who had blinded her long ago in that battle on the Sun Rock!—­did she give such warning as this to Kazan.  He sprang ahead of her, ready for battle even before he caught the scent of the gray beautiful creature of death stealing over the trail.

Then came the interruption.  From a mile away there burst forth a single fierce long-drawn howl.

After all, that was the cry of the true master of the wilderness—­the wolf.  It was the cry of hunger.  It was the cry that sent men’s blood running more swiftly through their veins, that brought the moose and the deer to their feet shivering in every limb—­the cry that wailed like a note of death through swamp and forest and over the snow-smothered ridges until its faintest echoes reached for miles into the starlit night.