[3]Copyright, 1922, by International Magazine Co. (Cosmopolitan Magazine)
JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
FOREWORD
There must be some sentiment attached to an author's choice of what he considers his "best story" if he can reach any such decision at all. Frankly, I cannot, and so I have chosen the story which has always lived closest to my heart. It is really not a short story complete in itself but is one of ten stories, or instalments, which make up my novel "Kazan."
This individual story I like best because in it I bid good-by to Kazan and Gray Wolf, two dogs whose memories will live with me long after the memories of many of my two-legged friends have faded away. Kazan died up near Fort MacPherson, a little this side of the Arctic Circle; Gray Wolf near Norway House. Gray Wolf was a dog with an undoubted strain of wolf in her, and was blinded when very young. She did not belong to me, but was owned by a man who claimed to be a relative of the Bishop of the Yukon. Kazan was mine. He was a one-man dog. It was his friendship for blind Gray Wolf, when we were on one of our adventures near Norway House, that led to the writing of my novel "Kazan."
KAZAN[4]
BY JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
Kazan, the quarter-strain wolf-dog, lay at the end of a fine steel chain, watching little Professor McGill mixing a pail of tallow and bran. A dozen yards from him lay a big Dane, his huge jaws drooling in anticipation of the unusual feast which McGill was preparing. The Dane showed signs of pleasure when McGill approached him with a quart of the mixture, and as he gulped it down the little man with the cold blue eyes and the gray-blond hair stroked his back without fear. But his attitude was different when he turned to Kazan. His movements were filled with caution, and yet his eyes and his lips were smiling, and he gave the wolf-dog no evidence of his fear, if it could be called fear.