Page:Silversheene (1924).djvu/144

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So Silversheene finally turned his nose northward and went back to the wild, to the primitive life from which the campfire of the primitive man had allured his ancestors ages before. But now the procedure was reversed. Then the campfire had drawn the gray wolf. He had wanted to know and worship the man creature. But now the man who was even more of a beast than any member of his dog team had driven him back to the wild, back from the warmth and the glow of the campfire into the dark and the cold of primitive life. Henceforth he would shun the campfires of men and their scent upon the trail. He was fleeing civilization and all it held for him.

Nature might be cruel, but she was not so cruel as men. She might be pitiless but she was just, and he could live by his sharp fangs and his wits just as his ancestors had lived before him. So Silversheene fled the haunts of men and went back to the wild with a savage joy in his dog heart which