[Illustration: He heard Joan's voice] KAZAN BY JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD Author of The Danger Trail, Etc. Illustrated by Gayle Hoskins and Frank Hoffman 1914 CONTENTS I. THE MIRACLE II. INTO THE NORTH III. McCREADY PAYS THE DEBT IV. FREE FROM BONDS V. THE FIGHT IN THE SNOW VI. JOAN VII. OUT OF THE BLIZZARD VIII. THE GREAT CHANGE IX. THE TRAGEDY ON SUN ROCK X. THE DAYS OF FIRE XI. ALWAYS TWO BY TWO XII. THE RED DEATH XIII. THE TRAIL OF HUNGER XIV. THE RIGHT OF FANG XV. A FIGHT UNDER THE STARS XVI. THE CALL XVII. HIS SON XVIII. THE EDUCATION OF BA-REE XIX. THE USURPERS XX. A FEUD IN THE WILDERNESS XXI. A SHOT ON THE SAND-BAR XXII. SANDY'S METHOD XXIII. PROFESSOR McGILL XXIV. ALONE IN DARKNESS XXV. THE LAST OF McTRIGGER XXVI. AN EMPTY WORLD XXVII. THE CALL OF SUN ROCK CHAPTER I THE MIRACLE Kazan lay mute and motionless, his gray nose between his forepaws, his eyes half closed. A rock could have appeared scarcely less lifeless than he; not a muscle twitched; not a hair moved; not an eyelid quivered. Yet every drop of the wild blood in his splendid body was racing in a ferment of excitement that Kazan had never before experienced; every nerve and fiber of his wonderful muscles was tense as steel wire. Quarter-strain wolf, three-quarters "husky," he had lived the four years of his life in the wilderness. He had felt the pangs of starvation. He knew what it meant to freeze. He had listened to the wailing winds of the long Arctic night over the barrens. He had heard the thunder of the torrent and the cataract, and had cowered under the mighty crash of the storm. His throat and sides were scarred by battle, and his eyes were red with the blister of the snows. He was called Kazan, the Wild Dog, because he was a giant among his kind and as fearless, even, as the men who drove him through the perils of a frozen world. He had never known fear--until now. He had never felt in him before the desire to _run_--not even on that terrible day in the forest when he had fought and killed the big gray lynx. He did not know what it was that frightened him, but he knew that he was in another world, and that many things in it startled and alarmed him. It was his first glimpse of civilization. He wished that his master would come back into the strange room where he had left him. It was a room filled with hideous things. There were great human faces on the wall, but they did not move or speak, but stared at him in a way he had never seen people look before. He remembered having looked on a master who lay very quiet and very cold in the snow, and he had sat back on his haunches and wailed forth the death song; but these people on the walls looked alive, and yet seemed dead.