that trembled in his throat.

In the afternoon they returned to what was left of the caribou doe on
the lake. In the edge of the forest Gray Wolf hung back. She did not yet
know the meaning of poison-baits, deadfalls and traps, but the instinct
of numberless generations was in her veins, and it told her there was
danger in visiting a second time a thing that had grown cold in death.

Kazan had seen masters work about carcasses that the wolves had left. He
had seen them conceal traps cleverly, and roll little capsules of
strychnine in the fat of the entrails, and once he had put a foreleg in
a trap, and had experienced its sting and pain and deadly grip. But he
did not have Gray Wolf's fear. He urged her to accompany him to the
white hummocks on the ice, and at last she went with him and sank back
restlessly on her haunches, while he dug out the bones and pieces of
flesh that the snow had kept from freezing. But she would not eat, and
at last Kazan went and sat on his haunches at her side, and with her
looked at what he had dug out from under the snow. He sniffed the air.
He could not smell danger, but Gray Wolf told him that it might be
there.

She told him many other things in the days and nights that followed. The
third night Kazan himself gathered the hunt-pack and led in the chase.
Three times that month, before the moon left the skies, he led the
chase, and each time there was a kill. But as the snows began to grow
softer under his feet he found a greater and greater companionship in
Gray Wolf, and they hunted alone, living on the big white rabbits. In
all the world he had loved but two things, the girl with the shining
hair and the hands that had caressed him--and Gray Wolf.