Edison Marshall

“ Again the slashing fangs caught him, but he was wholly unaware of the pain. The muscles of his arms snapped tight against the skin, the great tendons drew, and he jerked the mighty head around and back.
Then for a moment both contestants seemed to lie motionless in the snow. The wolf lay like a great hound before the fireside,—fore legs stretched in front, body at full length. Ned lay at one side, the animal's body between his knees, one arm around his neck, the other thrusting back the great head. The whole issue of life or death, victory or defeat, was suddenly immensely simplified. ”

“ And what quality made for dominance as much as love of freedom?
It was a familiar truth that no race was great without this love. Suddenly he saw that this was the first quality of greatness, whether in nations or individuals. The degree of this love was the degree of worth itself; and only the fawning weakling, the soul lost to honor and self-respect, was content to live beneath a master's lash when there was a fighting chance for liberty!
A fighting chance! The phrase meant nothing less than the chance of death. ”

“ But all through the long roll of the centuries the bravest men had defied this chance; and they would not lift their helmets to those that eschewed it. But now he knew the truth of that stern old law of tribes and nations,—a law sometimes forgotten yet graven on the everlasting stone—that he who will not risk his life for liberty does not deserve to live it. ”