"Kazan! Kazan! Kazan!"
At the top of the Sun Rock, Gray Wolf—gaunt and thinned by starvation—heard the woman's cry, and the call that was in her throat died away in a whine. And to the north a swiftly moving shadow stopped for a moment, and stood like a thing of rock under the starlight. It was Kazan. A strange fire leaped through his body. Every fiber of his brute understanding was afire with the knowledge that here was home. It was here, long ago, that he had lived, and loved, and fought—and all at once the dreams that had grown faded and indistinct in his memory came back to him as real living things. For, coming to him faintly over the plain, he heard Joan's voice!
In the starlight Joan stood, tense and white, when from out of the pale mists of the moon-glow he came to her, cringing on his belly, panting and wind-run, and with a strange whining note in his throat. And as Joan went to him, her arms reaching out, her lips sobbing his name over and over again, the man stood and looked down upon them with the wonder of a new and greater understanding in his face. He had no fear of the wolf-dog now. And as Joan's arms hugged Kazan's great shaggy head up to her he heard the whining gasping joy of the beast and the sobbing whispering voice of the girl, and with tensely gripped hands he faced the Sun Rock.
"My Gawd," he breathed. "I believe—it's so—"
As if in response to the thought in his mind, there came once more across the plain Gray Wolf's mate-seeking cry of grief and of loneliness. Swiftly as though struck by a lash Kazan was on his feet—oblivious of Joan's touch, of her voice, of the presence of the man. In another instant he was gone, and Joan flung herself against her husband's breast, and almost fiercely took his face between her two hands.
"Now do you believe?" she cried pantingly. "Now do you believe in the God of my world—the God I have lived with, the God that gives souls to the wild things, the God that—that has brought—us, all—together—once more—home!"
His arms closed gently about her.
"I believe, my Joan," he whispered.
"And you understand—now—what it means, 'Thou shalt not kill'?"
"Except that it brings us life—yes, I understand," he replied.
Her warm soft hands stroked his face. Her blue eyes, filled with the glory of the stars, looked up into his.
"Kazan and she—you and I—and the baby! Are you sorry—that we came back?" she asked.
So close he drew her against his breast that she did not hear the words he whispered in the soft warmth of her hair. And after that, for many hours, they sat in the starlight in front of the cabin door. But they did not hear again that lonely cry from the Sun Rock. Joan and her husband understood.
"He'll visit us again to-morrow," the man said at last. "Come, Joan, let us go to bed."
Together they entered the cabin.
And that night, side by side, Kazan and Gray Wolf hunted again in the moonlit plain.
BAREE, SON OF KAZAN
