to leap at its soft throat. And not until he had begun to tear at the
doe's flesh did the others dare to eat. He was master. He could send
them back with a snarl. At the gleam of his fangs they crouched
quivering on their bellies in the snow.

Kazan's blood was fomented with brute exultation, and the excitement and
fascination that came in the possession of new power took the place of
Gray Wolf each day a little more. She came in half an hour after the
kill, and there was no longer the lithesome alertness to her slender
legs, or gladness in the tilt of her ears or the poise of her head. She
did not eat much of the doe. Her blind face was turned always in Kazan's
direction. Wherever he moved she followed with her unseeing eyes, as if
expecting each moment his old signal to her--that low throat-note that
had called to her so often when they were alone in the wilderness.

In Kazan, as leader of the pack, there was working a curious change. If
his mates had been wolves it would not have been difficult for Gray Wolf
to have lured him away. But Kazan was among his own kind. He was a dog.
And they were dogs. Fires that had burned down and ceased to warm him
flamed up in him anew. In his life with Gray Wolf one thing had
oppressed him as it could not oppress her, and that thing was
loneliness. Nature had created him of that kind which requires
companionship--not of one but of many. It had given him birth that he
might listen to and obey the commands of the voice of man. He had grown
to hate men, but of the dogs--his kind--he was a part. He had been happy
with Gray Wolf, happier than he had ever been in the companionship of
men and his blood-brothers. But he had been a long time separated from
the life that had once been his and the call of blood made him for a
time forget. And only Gray Wolf, with that wonderful super-instinct
which nature was giving her in place of her lost sight, foresaw the end