"You're taking the dogs?" "Yes." Sandy lighted his pipe, and spoke like one strangely curious. "Must cost a heap to take these trips o' yourn, don't it?" "My last cost about seven thousand dollars. This will cost five," said McGill. "Gawd!" breathed Sandy. "An' you carry all that along with you! Ain't you afraid--something might happen----" The little professor was looking the other way now. The carelessness in his face and manner changed. His blue eyes grew a shade darker. A hard smile which Sandy did not see hovered about his lips for an instant. Then he turned, laughing. "I'm a very light sleeper," he said. "A footstep at night rouses me. Even a man's breathing awakens me, when I make up my mind that I must be on guard. And, besides,"--he drew from his pocket a blue-steel automatic pistol,--"I know how to use _this._" He pointed to a knot in the wall of the cabin. "Observe," he said. Five times he fired, at twenty paces, and when Sandy went up to look at the knot he gave a gasp. There was one jagged hole where the knot had been. "Pretty good," he grinned; "most men couldn't do better'n that with a rifle." When Sandy left, McGill followed him with a suspicious gleam in his eyes, and a curious smile on his lips. Then he turned to Kazan. "Guess you've got him figgered out about right, old man," he laughed softly. "I don't blame you very much for wanting to get him by the throat. Perhaps----" He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, and went into the cabin. Kazan dropped his head between his paws, and lay still, with wide-open eyes. It was early in September, and each night brought now the first chill breaths of autumn. Kazan watched the last glow of the sun as it faded out of the southern skies. Darkness always followed swiftly after that, and with darkness came more fiercely his wild longing for freedom. For Kazan was remembering. Ever since that terrible day when the brute prospector, Sandy McTrigger, had first beaten him sick and then chained him in the wake of his canoe till every splendid muscle in his bruised body seemed bursting with pain and he was choked with water, Kazan had never for one minute ceased to remember and hate and mourn. He hated Sandy McTrigger with all the hatred of a dog and a wolf, and he mourned for his blind mate, Gray Wolf, with as much intensity as he hated. But with all the longing and sorrow in him he could not know how much more awful their separation was for his faithful mate.