Came then the night when from the darkest corner of the windfall Gray Wolf warned him back with a low snarl.  He stood in the opening, a rabbit between his jaws.  He took no offense at the snarl, but stood for a moment, gazing into the gloom where Gray Wolf had hidden herself.  Then he dropped the rabbit and lay down squarely in the opening.  After a little he rose restlessly and went outside.  But he did not leave the windfall.  It was day when he reentered.  He sniffed, as he had sniffed once before a long time ago, between the boulders at the top of the Sun Rock.  That which was in the air was no longer a mystery to him.  He came nearer and Gray Wolf did not snarl.  She whined coaxingly as he touched her.  Then his muzzle found something else.  It was soft and warm and made a queer little sniffling sound.  There was a responsive whine in his throat, and in the darkness came the quick soft caress of Gray Wolf’s tongue.  Kazan returned to the sunshine and stretched himself out before the door of the windfall.  His jaws dropped open, for he was filled with a strange contentment.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE EDUCATION OF BA-REE

Robbed once of the joys of parenthood by the murder on the Sun Rock, both Gray Wolf and Kazan were different from what they would have been had the big gray lynx not come into their lives at that time.  As if it were but yesterday they remembered the moonlit night when the lynx brought blindness to Gray Wolf and destroyed her young, and when Kazan had avenged himself and his mate in his terrible fight to the death with their enemy.  And now, with that soft little handful of life snuggling close up against her, Gray Wolf saw through her blind eyes the tragic picture of that night more vividly than ever and she quivered at every sound, ready to leap in the face of an unseen foe, to rend all flesh that was not the flesh of Kazan.  And ceaselessly, the slightest sound bringing him to his feet, Kazan watched and guarded.  He mistrusted the moving shadows.  The snapping of a twig drew back his upper lip.  His fangs gleamed menacingly when the soft air brought a strange scent.  In him, too, the memory of the Sun Rock, the death of their first young and the blinding of Gray Wolf, had given birth to a new instinct.  Not for an instant was he off his guard.  As surely as one expects the sun to rise so did he expect that sooner or later their deadly enemy would creep on them from out of the forest.  In another hour such as this the lynx had brought death.  The lynx had brought blindness.  And so day and night he waited and watched for the lynx to come again.  And woe unto any other creature of flesh and blood that dared approach the windfall in these first days of Gray Wolf’s motherhood!