the world for him. Down there it was new, and strange, and without men.
From the other side something seemed pulling him back, and suddenly he
turned his head and gazed back through the moonlit space behind him, and
whined. It was the dog-whine now. The woman was back there. He could
hear her voice. He could feel the touch of her soft hand. He could see
the laughter in her face and eyes, the laughter that had made him warm
and happy. She was calling to him through the forests, and he was torn
between desire to answer that call, and desire to go down into the
plain. For he could also see many men waiting for him with clubs, and he
could hear the cracking of whips, and feel the sting of their lashes.

For a long time he remained on the top of the ridge that divided his
world. And then, at last, he turned and went down into the plain.

All that night he kept close to the hunt-pack, but never quite
approached it. This was fortunate for him. He still bore the scent of
traces, and of man. The pack would have torn him into pieces. The first
instinct of the wild is that of self-preservation. It may have been
this, a whisper back through the years of savage forebears, that made
Kazan roll in the snow now and then where the feet of the pack had trod
the thickest.

That night the pack killed a caribou on the edge of the lake, and
feasted until nearly dawn. Kazan hung in the face of the wind. The smell
of blood and of warm flesh tickled his nostrils, and his sharp ears
could catch the cracking of bones. But the instinct was stronger than
the temptation.

Not until broad day, when the pack had scattered far and wide over the
plain, did he go boldly to the scene of the kill. He found nothing but