He lowered his head once more, and in that moment witnessed the brief belly-to-earth advance, the freezing down to watch him again across a much smaller distance. This could only be the one he hated, no other. She was coming to him. The others remained a shifting of eyes beyond the clear ground--afraid of him, mere offal, mere dogs as she was not--or else they were holding back because they knew her reasons and his own. He knew that if he were to jump to his feet and dodge back behind the fire, she would not rush, not yet. No gambler, she would slide away and wait for the certainty, wait till dawn or beyond dawn or beyond the next dawn. He could not do it. It might be wiser, safer; might almost be a duty to Ben that he should retreat to comparative safety, now, while he had time. His body would not do it. His body would only wait like a bowstring, clutching the spear, controlling that deceitful droop of his head until the approaching moment when one of them--a half-starved alien beast or a boy who must remember the doorway of a reddened room where he clung sickly to a bedpost and did nothing--one of them would die quickly. Was she only a wolf? Some wolves, Jesse said---- Was it possible--he was up on his feet in the surging act of madness--was it possible she could hate and love him in the same way? He could not understand. His mind must have flown away, missing the interval, the second of decision. But she was here. She was down. It was over. She had screamed once, he thought, like a human thing; his ears held something of the strangled cry. More of the moment returned, her flaring mouth receiving the point in mid-air, her own driven weight spitting her upon it. It could not have happened. It had happened, and she was down, and it was over, and he could remember his own backward staggering at the impact while all of him tightened down on that center of existence where his hands grasped the green ash spear. There followed some wave of elastic power in his legs, and all the force was then flowing the other way until it was over. Simple butchery remained. He must follow with the spear her agonized writhing, hating no longer. No danger. Her failing paws threshed and tore at the shaft of the death she had swallowed. Her blood fumed out around it from a pierced lung. It was all over. * * * * * "Thursday night we came away--remember? That was the night you fell sick, and was burning and tossing all day Friday. Saturday you was better, but once or twice you didn't know me. It was the Friday night when the wolves came." "Are they still about? Nay, they can't be on so fair a morning. I feel washed clean, Ru. Weak, but--oh, I could do anything." "Weaker than you know. It'll pass. I saw the wolves last on Saturday. They scented something, I think, and drifted away." "It's all so still under the sun, and warm--what? I thought this was Saturday."