“Good God!” shrieked the man in pain, and Kazan caught the gleam of a rifle barrel as he sped toward the forest.  A shot followed.  Something like a red-hot coal ran the length of Kazan’s hip, and deep in the forest he stopped to lick at the burning furrow where the bullet had gone just deep enough to take the skin and hair from his flesh.

* * * * *

Gray Wolf was still waiting under the balsam shrub when Kazan returned to her.  Joyously she sprang forth to meet him.  Once more the man had sent back the old Kazan to her.  He muzzled her neck and face, and stood for a few moments with his head resting across her back, listening to the distant sound.

Then, with ears laid flat, he set out straight into the north and west.  And now Gray Wolf ran shoulder to shoulder with him like the Gray Wolf of the days before the dog-pack came; for that wonderful thing that lay beyond the realm of reason told her that once more she was comrade and mate, and that their trail that night was leading to their old home under the windfall.

CHAPTER XVII

HIS SON

It happened that Kazan was to remember three things above all others.  He could never quite forget his old days in the traces, though they were growing more shadowy and indistinct in his memory as the summers and the winters passed.  Like a dream there came to him a memory of the time he had gone down to Civilization.  Like dreams were the visions that rose before him now and then of the face of the First Woman, and of the faces of masters who—­to him—­had lived ages ago.  And never would he quite forget the Fire, and his fights with man and beast, and his long chases in the moonlight.  But two things were always with him as if they had been but yesterday, rising clear and unforgetable above all others, like the two stars in the North that never lost their brilliance.  One was Woman.  The other was the terrible fight of that night on the top of the Sun Rock, when the lynx had blinded forever his wild mate, Gray Wolf.  Certain events remain indelibly fixed in the minds of men; and so, in a not very different way, they remain in the minds of beasts.  It takes neither brain nor reason to measure the depths of sorrow or of happiness.  And Kazan in his unreasoning way knew that contentment and peace, a full stomach, and caresses and kind words instead of blows had come to him through Woman, and that comradeship in the wilderness—­faith, loyalty and devotion—­were a part of Gray Wolf.  The third unforgetable thing was about to occur in the home they had found for themselves under the swamp windfall during the days of cold and famine.