Then it moved, stretched itself like a dog, with its forefeet extended far to the front and its shoulders hunched low--and was a wolf.
A wolf is a heavy sleeper after a feast.

A hunter would have said that this wolf had gorged itself the night before.

Still, something had alarmed it.

Faintly there came to this wilderness outlaw that most thrilling of all things to the denizens of the forest--the scent of man.

He came down the ridge with the slow indifference of a full-fed animal, and with only a half of his old cunning; trotted across the softening snow of an opening and stopped where the man-scent was so strong that he lifted his head straight up to the sky and sent out to his comrades in forest and plain the warning signal that he had struck a human trail.