It was Fenris the wolf, and he had found his master at last.  Missing him at the accustomed place in the cave, he had trailed him to the lake margin:  a smell on the wind had led him the rest of the way.  He was not one to announce his coming by an audible footfall in the thicket.  Like a ghost he had glided almost to the edge of the firelight, lingering there—­with a caution learned in these last wild weeks of running with his brethren—­until he had made up his brute mind in regard to the strangers in the camp.  But he had waited only until he saw Ray kick the helpless form before him,—­that of the god that Fenris, for all the wild had claimed him, still worshipped in his inmost heart.  With fiendish, maniacal fury he had sprung to avenge the blow.

And his three followers, trained by the pack laws to follow where he led, and keyed to the highest pitch by their leader’s fury, leaped like gray demons of the Pit in his wake.

XLII

As a young tree breaks and goes down in the gale Ray Brent went down before the combined attack of the wolves.  What desperate struggle he made only seemed to increase their fury and shatter him the faster.  Utterly futile were all his blows:  his frantic, piercing screams of fear and agony raised to heaven, but were answered with no greater mercy than that he would have shown to Ben a moment before.

Seemingly in an instant he was on his back and the ravening pack were about him in a ring.  In that lurid firelight their fangs gleamed like ivory as they flashed, here and there, over his body and throat, and their fierce eyes blazed with pale-blue fire,—­the mark and sign of the blood madness of the beasts of prey.

Seemingly in a single instant the life had been torn from him, leaving only a strange, huddled, ghastly thing beside the dying fire.  But the pack leaped from him at once.  Fenris had caught sight of Chan’s figure as he ran for the nearest tree and seemingly with one leap he was upon him.  He sprang at him from the side; and his fangs gleamed once.

He had struck true, his fangs went home, and the life went out of Chan Heminway in a single, neighing scream.  He pitched forward, shuddered once in the soft grass, and lay still.  The pack surged around his body, struck at it once or twice, then stood growling as if waiting for their leader’s command.

Before ever Ray fell, Ben had taken what measures of self-defense he could in case the pack, forgetting its master’s master, might turn on himself and the girl.  He had reached the knife hilt and severed the ropes about the girl’s wrists.  “Stay behind me,” he cautioned.  “Don’t move a muscle.”

He knew that any attempt to reach and climb a tree would attract the attention of the pack and send them ravening about her.  Again he knew that her life as well as his own depended on his control of the pack leader.  He saw Chan go down, seemingly in a single instant, and he braced himself against attack.  “Down, Fenris!” he shouted.  “Down—­get down!”