At the mouth of the Tahkeena, one night after supper, the wolf turned up a snowshoe rabbit, blundered it, and missed. In a second the whole pack was in full cry. A hundred yards away was a camp of the Northwest Police, with fifty dogs, huskies all, who joined the chase. The rabbit sped down the river, turned off into a small creek, up the frozen bed of which it held steadily. It ran lightly on the surface of the snow, while the wolves plowed through by main strength. Kain led the pack, sixty strong, around bend after bend, but he could not gain. He laid down low to the race, whining eagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap by leap, in the waning red moonlight. And leap by leap, like some pale frost wraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead.
All that stirring of present instincts which at stated periods drives men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to kill-all this was Kain's, only it was infinitely more intimate. He was raging at the head of the pack, running the little animal down, the living meat, to kill with his own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in its warm blood.
There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, the ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that tone is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Kain, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was dounding the deeps of her nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that is was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.
But Akin, cold and calculating even in his supreme moods, left the pack and cut across a narrow neck of land where the creek made a long bend around. Kain didn't know of this, and as he rounded the bend, the frost wrath of a rabbit still flitting before him, he saw another and larger frost wraith leap from the overhanging bank into the immediate path of the rabbit. It was Akin. The rabbit could not turn, and as the white teeth broke its back in midair it shrieked as loudly as a stricken man may shriek. At the sound of this, the cry of Life plunging down from Life's apex in the grip of Death, the full pack at Kain's heels raised a hell's chorus of delight.
Kain did not cry out. He did not check himself, but drove in upon Akin, shoulder to shoulder, so hard that he missed the throat. They rolled over and over in the powdery snow. Akin gained his feet almost as though he had not been overthrown, slashing Kain down the shoulder and leaping clear. Twice his teeth clipped together, like the steel jaws of a trap, as he backed away for better footing, with lean and lifting lips that writhed and snarled.
In a flash Akin knew it. The time had come. It was to the death. As they circled about, snarling, ears laid back, keenly watchful for the advantage, the scene came back to Kain with a sense of familiarity. He seemed to remember it all-the white woods, the earth, the moonlight, and the thrill of battle. Over the whiteness and silence brooded a ghostly calm. There was not the faintest whisper of air-nothing moved, not a leaf quivered, the visible breaths of the wolves rising slowly and lingering in the frosty air. They had made short work of the snowshoe rabbit, these wolves that were ill-tamed; and they were now drawn up in an expectant circle. They too, were silent, their eyes only gleaming and their breaths drifting slowly upward. To Kain it was nothing new or strange, this scene of old time. It was as though it had always been, wonted way of things.
Akin was a practiced fighter. From SpSpitsbergenhrough the Arctic, and across Canada and the Barrens, he had held his own with all manner of wolves and achieved to mastery over them. Bitter rage was his, but never blind rage. He never rushed till he was prepared to receive a rush; never attacked till he had first defended that attack.
In vain Kain strove to sink his teeth in the neck of the big red wolf. Wherever his fangs struck for the softer flesh, they were countered by the fangs of Akin. Fang clashed fang, and lips were cut and bleeding, but Kain could not penetrate his enemy's guard. Then he warmed up and enveloped Akin in a whirlwind of rushes. Time and time again he tried for the fire-red throat, where life bubbled near to the surface, and each time and every time Akin slashed him and got away. Then Kain took to rushing, as though for the throat, when, suddenly drawing back his head and curving in from the side, he would drive his shoulder at the shoulder of Akin as a ram by which to overthrow him. But instead, Kain's shoulder was slashed down each time as Akin leaped lightly away.
Akin was untouched, while Kain was streaming with blood and panting hard. The fight was growing desperate. And all the while the silent and wolfish circle waited to finish off whichever wolf went down. As Kain grew winded, Akin took to rushing, and he kept him staggering for footing. Once Kain went over, and the whole circle of sixty wolves started up; but he recovered himself, almost in midair, and the circle sank down again and waited.
But Kain possessed a quality that made for greatness-imagination. He fought by instinct, but he could fight by head as well. He rushed, as though attempting the old shoulder trick, but at the last instant swept low to the snow and in. His teeth closed on Akin's left foreleg. There was a crunch of breaking bone, and the red wolf faced him on three legs. Thrice he tried to knock him over, then repeated the trick and broke the right foreleg. Despite the pain and helplessness, Akin struggled madly to keep up. He saw the silent circle, with gleaming eyes, lolling tongues, and silvery breaths drifting upward, closing in upon him as he had seen similar circles close in upon beaten antagonists in the past. Only this time he was the one who was beaten.
There was no hope for her. Kain was inexorable. Mercy was a thing reserved for gentler climes. He maneuvered for the final rush. The circle had tightened till he could feel the breaths of the huskies on his flanks. He could see them, beyond Akin and to either side, half crouching for the spring, their eyes fixed upon her. A pause seemed to fall. Every animal was motionless as though turned to stone. Only Akin quivered and bristled as he staggered back and forth, snarling with horrible menace, as though to frighten off impending death. Then Kain sprang in and out; but while he was in, shoulder had at last squarely met shoulder. The dark circle became a dot on the moon-flooded snow as Akin disappeared from view. Kain stood and looked on, the successful champion, the dominant primordial beast who made his kill and found it good.