He heard again the cracking of bones and the rending of flesh, and something told him that hereafter all the wilderness would hear and recognize his voice, and that when he sat back on his haunches and called to the moon and the stars, those swift-footed hunters of the big plain would respond to it.
He circled twice about the caribou and the pack, and then trotted off to the edge of the black spruce forest.
When he reached the shadows he looked back.

Gray Wolf was following him.
She was only a few yards behind.

And now she came up to him, a little timidly, and she, too, looked back to the dark blotch of life out on the lake.

And as she stood there close beside him, Kazan sniffed at something in the air that was not the scent of blood, nor the perfume of the balsam and spruce.

It was a thing that seemed to come to him from the clear stars, the cloudless moon, the strange and beautiful quiet of the night itself.