Antoine struggled not as a man; he was now merely the good, glorious, fighting beast—masterful, primitive, the keeper of his own. Lacerated with the snapping of powerful jaws, bleeding from his face and hands, the man felt that he was winning. With a whining cry, less than half human, he succeeded in fixing his left hand upon the hairy throat, crushed the wolf down upon its back, and with prodigious strength, began pressing the fingers of his right hand in between the protruding lower ribs. He would tear them out! He would thrust his hand in among the vitals of his foe! All the while Susette, whining and switching her tail, watched with glowing eyes the struggle of the males, and waited for the proof of the master. At this juncture she arose with a nervous, threatening swaying of the head, approached the two cautiously, then hurled herself into the encounter. She leaped with a savage yelp upon him who had long been her master. The man’s grip relaxed. He fell back and threw out his arms in which once more the weakness of the fever came. “Susette!” he gasped; “I was good to you; I——” His voice was choked into a wheeze. Susette had gripped him by the throat, and the two were upon him. She had gone back to the ways of her kind—and the man was an alien. II THE LOOK IN THE FACE IT was after one of the Saturday night feasts at No-Teeth Lodge that I drew my old friend, Half-a-Day, to one side where the shadows were not broken by the firelight. “Tell me another story, Half-a-Day,” I said. He grunted and puffed at his pipe in silence. “Have I not given much cow meat to the feast and did I not throw silver on the drums?” “Ah,” he assented. “Then I wish to hear a story.” “You are my friend,” he began with majestic deliberation, speaking in his own tongue; “for we have eaten meat together from the same kettle and looked upon each other through the pipe smoke. It will therefore make me glad to tell you a story about buffalo meat——” “Ah, about a hunt?” “And a _me-zhinga_ [girl]——” “Oh, a love story!” “And a man whom I wished to kill.” “Good! And did you kill him?” “My brother is like all his white brothers, who leap at things. Never will they wait. If I said yes or no, then would I have no story.” “Then give me a puff at the pipe, Half-a-Day, and I will be patient.” Half-a-Day gave me the pipe and began, with eyes staring through the fire and far away down the long trail that leads back to youth. “Many winters and summers ago I was a young man; now I am slow when I walk and my head looks much to the ground. But I remember, and now again I am young for a little while. I can smell the fires in the evening that roared upward then, even tho’ they are cold these many moons and their ashes scattered. And I can see the face of Paezha [flower], the one daughter of Douba Mona, for my eyes are young too. And Douba Mona was a great man.