With dawn she dragged herself out to the lifeless little bodies on the
rock.

And then Kazan saw the terrible work of the lynx. For Gray Wolf was
blind--not for a day or a night, but blind for all time. A gloom that no
sun could break had become her shroud. And perhaps again it was that
instinct of animal creation, which often is more wonderful than man's
reason, that told Kazan what had happened. For he knew now that she was
helpless--more helpless than the little creatures that had gamboled in
the moonlight a few hours before. He remained close beside her all
that day.

[Illustration: Kazan gripped at its throat]

Vainly that day did Joan call for Kazan. Her voice rose to the Sun Rock,
and Gray Wolf's head snuggled closer to Kazan, and Kazan's ears dropped
back, and he licked her wounds. Late in the afternoon Kazan left Gray
Wolf long enough to run to the bottom of the trail and bring up the
snow-shoe rabbit. Gray Wolf muzzled the fur and flesh, but would not
eat. Still a little later Kazan urged her to follow him to the trail. He
no longer wanted to stay at the top of the Sun Rock, and he no longer
wanted Gray Wolf to stay there. Step by step he drew her down the
winding path away from her dead puppies. She would move only when he was
very near her--so near that she could touch his scarred flank with her
nose.

They came at last to the point in the trail where they had to leap down
a distance of three or four feet from the edge of a rock, and here Kazan
saw how utterly helpless Gray Wolf had become. She whined, and crouched
twenty times before she dared make the spring, and then she jumped