Soft-footed, searching still for signs of the furry enemies who had invaded their domain, Kazan slipped along the creek.  Gray Wolf ran close at his shoulder.  They made no sound, and the wind was in their favor—­bringing scents toward them.  It brought the otter smell.  To Kazan and Gray Wolf it was the scent of a water animal, rank and fishy, and they took it for the beaver.  They advanced still more cautiously.  Then Kazan saw the big otter asleep on the log and he gave the warning to Gray Wolf.  She stopped, standing with her head thrown up, while Kazan made his stealthy advance.  The otter stirred uneasily.  It was growing dusk.  The golden pool of sunlight had faded away.  Back in the darkening timber an owl greeted night with its first-low call.  The otter breathed deeply.  His whiskered muzzle twitched.  He was awakening—­stirring—­when Kazan leaped upon him.  Face to face, in fair fight, the old otter could have given a good account of himself.  But there was no chance now.  The wild itself had for the first time in his life become his deadliest enemy.  It was not man now—­but O-ee-ki, “the Spirit,” that had laid its hand upon him.  And from the Spirit there was no escape.  Kazan’s fangs sank into his soft jugular.  Perhaps he died without knowing what it was that had leaped upon him.  For he died—­quickly, and Kazan and Gray Wolf went on their way, hunting still for enemies to slaughter, and not knowing that in the otter they had killed the one ally who would have driven the beavers from their swamp home.

The days that followed grew more and more hopeless for Kazan and Gray Wolf.  With the otter gone Broken Tooth and his tribe held the winning hand.  Each day the water backed a little farther into the depression surrounding the windfall.  By the middle of July only a narrow strip of land connected the windfall hummock with the dry land of the swamp.  In deep water the beavers now worked unmolested.  Inch by inch the water rose, until there came the day when it began to overflow the connecting strip.  For the last time Kazan and Gray Wolf passed from their windfall home and traveled up the stream between the two ridges.  The creek held a new meaning for them now and as they traveled they sniffed its odors and listened to its sounds with an interest they had never known before.  It was an interest mingled a little with fear, for something in the manner in which the beavers had beaten them reminded Kazan and Gray Wolf of man.  And that night, when in the radiance of the big white moon they came within scent of the beaver colony that Broken Tooth had left, they turned quickly northward into the plains.  Thus had brave old Broken Tooth taught them to respect the flesh and blood and handiwork of his tribe.

CHAPTER XXI

A SHOT ON THE SAND-BAR