A FIGHT UNDER THE STARS
On their haunches Kazan and Gray Wolf waited. Five minutes passed,
ten--fifteen--and Gray Wolf became uneasy. No response had followed her
call. Again she howled, with Kazan quivering and listening beside her,
and again there followed that dead stillness of the night. This was not
the way of the pack. She knew that it had not gone beyond the reach of
her voice and its silence puzzled her. And then in a flash it came to
them both that the pack, or the single wolf whose cry they had heard,
was very near them. The scent was warm. A few moments later Kazan saw a
moving object in the moonlight. It was followed by another, and still
another, until there were five slouching in a half-circle about them,
seventy yards away. Then they laid themselves flat in the snow and were
motionless.
A snarl turned Kazan's eyes to Gray Wolf. His blind mate had drawn
back. Her white fangs gleamed menacingly in the starlight. Her ears were
flat. Kazan was puzzled. Why was she signaling danger to him when it was
the wolf, and not the lynx, out there in the snow? And why did the
wolves not come in and feast? Slowly he moved toward them, and Gray Wolf
called to him with her whine. He paid no attention to her, but went on,
stepping lightly, his head high in the air, his spine bristling.
In the scent of the strangers, Kazan was catching something now that was
strangely familiar. It drew him toward them more swiftly and when at
last he stopped twenty yards from where the little group lay flattened
in the snow, his thick brush waved slightly. One of the animals sprang
up and approached. The others followed and in another moment Kazan was
in the midst of them, smelling and smelled, and wagging his tail. They
were dogs, and not wolves.
In some lonely cabin in the wilderness their master had died, and they
had taken to the forests. They still bore signs of the sledge-traces.
About their necks were moose-hide collars. The hair was worn short at
their flanks, and one still dragged after him three feet of corded
babiche trace. Their eyes gleamed red and hungry in the glow of the moon
and the stars. They were thin, and gaunt and starved, and Kazan suddenly
turned and trotted ahead of them to the side of the dead bull. Then he
fell back and sat proudly on his haunches beside Gray Wolf, listening to
the snapping of jaws and the rending of flesh as the starved pack
feasted.
Gray Wolf slunk closer to Kazan. She muzzled his neck and Kazan gave her
a swift dog-like caress of his tongue, assuring her that all was well.
She flattened herself in the snow when the dogs had finished and came up
in their dog way to sniff at her, and make closer acquaintance with
Kazan. Kazan towered over her, guarding her. One huge red-eyed dog who
still dragged the bit of babiche trace muzzled Gray Wolf's soft neck for
a fraction of a second too long, and Kazan uttered a savage snarl of
warning. The dog drew back, and for a moment their fangs gleamed over
Gray Wolf's blind face. It was the Challenge of the Breed.
The big husky was the leader of the pack, and if one of the other dogs
had snarled at him, as Kazan snarled he would have leaped at his throat.
But in Kazan, standing fierce and half wild over Gray Wolf, he
recognized none of the serfdom of the sledge-dogs. It was master facing
master; in Kazan it was more than that for he was Gray Wolf's mate. In
an instant more he would have leaped over her body to have fought for
her, more than for the right of leadership. But the big husky turned
away sullenly, growling, still snarling, and vented his rage by nipping
fiercely at the flank of one of his sledge-mates.
Gray Wolf understood what had happened, though she could not see. She
shrank closer to Kazan. She knew that the moon and the stars had looked
down on that thing that always meant death--the challenge to the right
of mate. With her luring coyness, whining and softly muzzling his
shoulder and neck, she tried to draw Kazan away from the pad-beaten
circle in which the bull lay. Kazan's answer was an ominous rolling of
smothered thunder deep down in his throat. He lay down beside her,
licked her blind face swiftly, and faced the stranger dogs.
The moon sank lower and lower and at last dropped behind the western
forests. The stars grew paler. One by one they faded from the sky and
after a time there followed the cold gray dawn of the North. In that
dawn the big husky leader rose from the hole he had made in the snow and
returned to the bull. Kazan, alert, was on his feet in an instant and
stood also close to the bull. The two circled ominously, their heads
lowered, their crests bristling. The husky drew away, and Kazan crouched
at the bull's neck and began tearing at the frozen flesh. He was not
hungry. But in this way he showed his right to the flesh, his defiance
of the right of the big husky.
For a few seconds he forgot Gray Wolf. The husky had slipped back like a
shadow and now he stood again over Gray Wolf, sniffing her neck and
body. Then he whined. In that whine were the passion, the invitation,
the demand of the Wild. So quickly that the eye could scarcely follow
her movement faithful Gray Wolf sank her gleaming fangs in the husky's
shoulder.
A gray streak--nothing more tangible than a streak of gray, silent and
terrible, shot through the dawn-gloom. It was Kazan. He came without a
snarl, without a cry, and in a moment he and the husky were in the
throes of terrific battle.
The four other huskies ran in quickly and stood waiting a dozen paces
from the combatants. Gray Wolf lay crouched on her belly. The giant
husky and the quarter-strain wolf-dog were not fighting like sledge-dog
or wolf. For a few moments rage and hatred made them fight like
mongrels. Both had holds. Now one was down, and now the other, and so
swiftly did they change their positions that the four waiting
sledge-dogs were puzzled and stood motionless. Under other conditions
they would have leaped upon the first of the fighters to be thrown upon
his back and torn him to pieces. That was the way of the wolf and the
wolf-dog. But now they stood back, hesitating and fearful.
The big husky had never been beaten in battle. Great Dane ancestors had
given him a huge bulk and a jaw that could crush an ordinary dog's head.
But in Kazan he was meeting not only the dog and the wolf, but all that
was best in the two. And Kazan had the advantage of a few hours of rest
and a full stomach. More than that, he was fighting for Gray Wolf. His
fangs had sunk deep in the husky's shoulder, and the husky's long teeth
met through the hide and flesh of his neck. An inch deeper, and they
would have pierced his jugular. Kazan knew this, as he crunched his
enemy's shoulder-bone, and every instant--even in their fiercest
struggling--he was guarding against a second and more successful lunge
of those powerful jaws.
At last the lunge came, and quicker than the wolf itself Kazan freed
himself and leaped back. His chest dripped blood, but he did not feel
the hurt. They began slowly to circle, and now the watching sledge-dogs
drew a step or two nearer, and their jaws drooled nervously and their
red eyes glared as they waited for the fatal moment. Their eyes were on
the big husky. He became the pivot of Kazan's wider circle now, and he
limped as he turned. His shoulder was broken. His ears were flattened
as he watched Kazan.
Kazan's ears were erect, and his feet touched the snow lightly. All his
fighting cleverness and all his caution had returned to him. The blind
rage of a few moments was gone and he fought now as he had fought his
deadliest enemy, the long-clawed lynx. Five times he circled around the
husky, and then like a shot he was in, sending his whole weight against
the husky's shoulder, with the momentum of a ten-foot leap behind it.
This time he did not try for a hold, but slashed at the husky's jaws. It
was the deadliest of all attacks when that merciless tribunal of death
stood waiting for the first fall of the vanquished. The huge dog was
thrown from his feet. For a fatal moment he rolled upon his side and in
the moment his four sledge-mates were upon him. All of their hatred of
the weeks and months in which the long-fanged leader had bullied them in
the traces was concentrated upon him now and he was literally torn into
pieces.
Kazan pranced to Gray Wolf's side and with a joyful whine she laid her
head over his neck. Twice he had fought the Fight of Death for her.
Twice he had won. And in her blindness Gray Wolf's soul--if soul she
had--rose in exultation to the cold gray sky, and her breast panted
against Kazan's shoulder as she listened to the crunching of fangs in
the flesh and bone of the foe her lord and master had overthrown.