The four other huskies ran in quickly and stood waiting a dozen paces from the combatants.  Gray Wolf lay crouched on her belly.  The giant husky and the quarter-strain wolf-dog were not fighting like sledge-dog or wolf.  For a few moments rage and hatred made them fight like mongrels.  Both had holds.  Now one was down, and now the other, and so swiftly did they change their positions that the four waiting sledge-dogs were puzzled and stood motionless.  Under other conditions they would have leaped upon the first of the fighters to be thrown upon his back and torn him to pieces.  That was the way of the wolf and the wolf-dog.  But now they stood back, hesitating and fearful.

The big husky had never been beaten in battle.  Great Dane ancestors had given him a huge bulk and a jaw that could crush an ordinary dog’s head.  But in Kazan he was meeting not only the dog and the wolf, but all that was best in the two.  And Kazan had the advantage of a few hours of rest and a full stomach.  More than that, he was fighting for Gray Wolf.  His fangs had sunk deep in the husky’s shoulder, and the husky’s long teeth met through the hide and flesh of his neck.  An inch deeper, and they would have pierced his jugular.  Kazan knew this, as he crunched his enemy’s shoulder-bone, and every instant—­even in their fiercest struggling—­he was guarding against a second and more successful lunge of those powerful jaws.

At last the lunge came, and quicker than the wolf itself Kazan freed himself and leaped back.  His chest dripped blood, but he did not feel the hurt.  They began slowly to circle, and now the watching sledge-dogs drew a step or two nearer, and their jaws drooled nervously and their red eyes glared as they waited for the fatal moment.  Their eyes were on the big husky.  He became the pivot of Kazan’s wider circle now, and he limped as he turned.  His shoulder was broken.  His ears were flattened as he watched Kazan.

Kazan’s ears were erect, and his feet touched the snow lightly.  All his fighting cleverness and all his caution had returned to him.  The blind rage of a few moments was gone and he fought now as he had fought his deadliest enemy, the long-clawed lynx.  Five times he circled around the husky, and then like a shot he was in, sending his whole weight against the husky’s shoulder, with the momentum of a ten-foot leap behind it.  This time he did not try for a hold, but slashed at the husky’s jaws.  It was the deadliest of all attacks when that merciless tribunal of death stood waiting for the first fall of the vanquished.  The huge dog was thrown from his feet.  For a fatal moment he rolled upon his side and in the moment his four sledge-mates were upon him.  All of their hatred of the weeks and months in which the long-fanged leader had bullied them in the traces was concentrated upon him now and he was literally torn into pieces.

Kazan pranced to Gray Wolf’s side and with a joyful whine she laid her head over his neck.  Twice he had fought the Fight of Death for her.  Twice he had won.  And in her blindness Gray Wolf’s soul—­if soul she had—­rose in exultation to the cold gray sky, and her breast panted against Kazan’s shoulder as she listened to the crunching of fangs in the flesh and bone of the foe her lord and master had overthrown.