A thousand times before this unseen tragedy of the wilderness had been enacted.

It was an epoch of that life where life itself means the survival of the fittest, where to live means to kill, and to die means to perpetuate life.

At last, in that steady and deadly circling of Gray Wolf and Kazan, there came a time when the old bull did not turn--then a second, a third and a fourth time, and Gray Wolf seemed to know.

With Kazan she drew back from the hard-beaten trail, and they flattened themselves on their bellies under a dwarf spruce--and waited.

For many minutes the bull stood motionless, his hamstrung quarter sinking lower and lower.