Kazan   By: James Oliver Curwood (1878-1927)

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.

Suddenly Kazan lifted his ears a little. He heard steps, then low voices. One of them was his master's voice. But the other it sent a little tremor through him! Once, so long ago that it must have been in his puppyhood days, he seemed to have had a dream of a laugh that was like the girl's laugh a laugh that was all at once filled with a wonderful happiness, the thrill of a wonderful love, and a sweetness that made Kazan lift his head as they came in. He looked straight at them, his red eyes gleaming. At once he knew that she must be dear to his master, for his master's arm was about her. In the glow of the light he saw that her hair was very bright, and that there was the color of the crimson bakneesh vine in her face and the blue of the bakneesh flower in her shining eyes. Suddenly she saw him, and with a little cry darted toward him.

"Stop!" shouted the man. "He's dangerous! Kazan "