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. To Joan, Kazan was more than mere dog. Next to her husband and baby she loved him. There passed through her mind a day when he had saved her and the baby from the wolves—and again the scene of that other day when he had leaped upon the giant husky that was at the throat of little Joan. . . . As her arms hugged Kazan's great shaggy head up to her, the man heard the whining, gasping joy of the beast.
And then 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. In another instant he was gone.
"Now do you believe?" cried Joan 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. Afterward they sat in the starlight in front of the cabin. But they did not hear again that lonely cry from the Sun Rock. Joan and her husband understood. "He'll visit us again tomorrow," 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 on the moonlit plain.
[4]From James Other Curwood's Kazan. Copyright 1914, by Cosmopolitan Book Corporation. By permission of the publishers.
MEREDITH NICHOLSON
FOREWORD
I ALWAYS find myself uncomfortable in the company of those who delight in literary shop-talk. Nothing I have ever heard or read on the subject of writing has seemed to me of any value to a practitioner of the art in so far as methods, hours of work and such matters are concerned. One writes or one doesn't, and that seems to me the end on't. In the domain of style there is, of course, a valuable and fascinating literature, but the ability to write English prose of beauty and power pertains to the higher branches of the craft.