energy of life and action. He traveled north and west. It was the call
of early days--the days away up on the Mackenzie. The Mackenzie was a
thousand miles away.

He came upon many trails in the snow that day, and sniffed the scents
left by the hoofs of moose and caribou, and the fur-padded feet of a
lynx. He followed a fox, and the trail led him to a place shut in by
tall spruce, where the snow was beaten down and reddened with blood.
There was an owl's head, feathers, wings and entrails lying here, and he
knew that there were other hunters abroad besides himself.

Toward evening he came upon tracks in the snow that were very much like
his own. They were quite fresh, and there was a warm scent about them
that made him whine, and filled him again with that desire to fall back
upon his haunches and send forth the wolf-cry. This desire grew stronger
in him as the shadows of night deepened in the forest. He had traveled
all day, but he was not tired. There was something about night, now that
there were no men near, that exhilarated him strangely. The wolf blood
in him ran swifter and swifter. To-night it was clear. The sky was
filled with stars. The moon rose. And at last he settled back in the
snow and turned his head straight up to the spruce-tops, and the wolf
came out of him in a long mournful cry which quivered through the still
night for miles.

For a long time he sat and listened after that howl. He had found
voice--a voice with a strange new note in it, and it gave him still
greater confidence. He had expected an answer, but none came. He had
traveled in the face of the wind, and as he howled, a bull moose crashed
through the scrub timber ahead of him, his horns rattling against the
trees like the tattoo of a clear birch club as he put distance between