jay's feathers.
Swift as a flash the bird's beak began to strike. The jay was the king
of the smaller birds. In nesting season it killed the brush sparrows,
the mild-eyed moose-birds, and the tree-sappers. Again and again it
struck Ba-ree with its powerful beak, but the son of Kazan had now
reached the age of battle and the pain of the blows only made his own
teeth sink deeper. At last he found the flesh; and a puppyish snarl rose
in his throat. Fortunately he had gained a hold under the wing and after
the first dozen blows the jay's resistance grew weaker. Five minutes
later Ba-ree loosened his teeth and drew back a step to look at the
crumpled and motionless creature before him. The jay was dead. He had
won his first battle. And with victory came the wonderful dawning of
that greatest instinct of all, which told him that no longer was he a
drone in the marvelous mechanism of wilderness life--but a part of it
from this time forth. _For he had killed_.

Half an hour later Gray Wolf came down over his trail. The jay was torn
into bits. Its feathers were scattered about and Ba-ree's little nose
was bloody. Ba-ree was lying in triumph beside his victim. Swiftly Gray
Wolf understood and caressed him joyously. When they returned to the
windfall Ba-ree carried in his jaws what was left of the jay.

From that hour of his first kill hunting became the chief passion of
Ba-ree's life. When he was not sleeping in the sun, or under the
windfall at night, he was seeking life that he could destroy. He
slaughtered an entire family of wood-mice. Moose-birds were at first the
easiest for him to stalk, and he killed three. Then he encountered an
ermine and the fierce little white outlaw of the forests gave him his
first defeat. Defeat cooled his ardor for a few days, but taught him the
great lesson that there were other fanged and flesh-eating animals
besides himself and that nature had so schemed things that fang must not
prey upon fang--_for food_. Many things had been born in him.
Instinctively he shunned the porcupine without experiencing the torture
of its quills. He came face to face with a fisher-cat one day, a
fortnight after his fight with the ermine. Both were seeking food, and
as there was no food between them to fight over, each went his own way.

Farther and farther Ba-ree ventured from the windfall, always following
the creek. Sometimes he was gone for hours. At first Gray Wolf was
restless when he was away, but she seldo