Clearwater Republican. [volume] (Orofino, Idaho) 1912-1922, 1918-02-22
or to scent the air.

| VI " scent the dlT.
After the fight on the Sun Rock, KsI
Fan had taken his blind mate to thick
clump of spruce and balsam In the
river bottom, where they remained I'M
til early summer. Every day for weeks
Kazan went to the cabin where Joan
and the baby-and the man-had been.
For long time he went hopefully,
looking each day or night to see some
sign of life there. But the door was
never open. The boards and saplings
at the windows always remained.
Never spiral of smoke rose from the
clay chimney. Grass and vines be.
gan to grow in the path. And fainter
and fainter grew that scent which ka
zan could still find about 1.-THE scent
of m;tit, of the woman, the baby
One day he found little baby moe
casin under one of the closed win
dows. II was old, and worn out, and
blackened by snow and rain, but he
lay down beside 1t, and remained there
for long time, while the baby joan
a thousand miles away-was playing
with the strange toys of civilization.
Then he returned to Gray Wolf among
the spruce and baIsan.
The cabin was the one place to
which Gray Wolf would not follow
him. At all other times she was at his
side. Now that she had become ac-
custOmed to blindness, she even ac-
cOmpanied him on his hunts, until he
struck game and began the chase.
Then she would wait for him. Kazan
usually hunted the big snow-shoe rab-
bits. But one night he ran down and
killed a young doe. The kill was too
heavy to drag to Gray Wolf, so he re-
turned to where she was waiting for
him and guided her to the feast. In
many ways they became more and
more inseparable as the summer
heightened, until at last, through all
the wilderness, their footprints were
always two by two and never one by
one.
Then came the great fire.
Gray Wolf caught the scent of 1t
when 1t was still two days to the west.
The moon. drifting into the west, be-
came blood red. When it dropped BE-
hind the wilderness in this manner,
The Indians called it the bleeding moon,
and the air was filed with omens.
All the next day Gray Wolf was
nervous, and toward noon Kazan
caught in the air the warning that she
had sensed many hours ahead of him.
Steadily the scent grew stronger, and
by the middle of the afternoon the sun
was yelled by film of smoke.
The flight of the wild things from the
triangle Of forest between the juno
tons of the Pipestone and Cree rivers
would have begun then, but the wind
shifted. 1t was fatal shift. The fire
was raging from the west and south.
Then the wind swept straight east
ward, carrying the smoke with it, and
during this breathing spell all the wild
creatures In the triangle between the
two rivers waited. This gave the fire
time to sweep completely across the
base of the forest triangle, cutting Off
the last trails of escape.
Then the wind shifted again. and the
fire swept north. The head of the tri-
angle became death-trap. All through
the night the southern sky was filled
with lurid glow, and by morning the
heat and smoke and ash were suffocat-
Ing.
Panic-stricken, Kazan searched vain
iy for means Of escape. Not for an
instant did he leave Gray Wolf. It
would have been easy for him to swim
across either Of the two streams, for
he was three-quarters dog. But at the
first touch of water on her paws, Gray
Wolf drew back, shrinking. Like all
her breed, she would face fire and
death before water. Kazan urged. A