m went with him and after a time
her restlessness left her. Nature was working swiftly. It was Kazan who
was restless now. Moonlight nights had come and the wanderlust was
growing more and more insistent in his veins. And Gray Wolf, too, was
filled with the strange longing to roam at large out into the big world.

Came then the afternoon when Ba-ree went on his longest hunt. Half a
mile away he killed his first rabbit. He remained beside it until dusk.
The moon rose, big and golden, flooding the forests and plains and
ridges with a light almost like that of day. It was a glorious night.
And Ba-ree found the moon, and left his kill. And the direction in
which he traveled _was away from the windfall_.

All that night Gray Wolf watched and waited. And when at last the moon
was sinking into the south and west she settled back on her haunches,
turned her blind face to the sky and sent forth her first howl since the
day Ba-ree was born. Nature had come into her own. Far away Ba-ree
heard, but he did not answer. A new world was his. He had said good-by
to the windfall--and home.

CHAPTER XIX

THE USURPERS

It was that glorious season between spring and summer, when the northern
nights were brilliant with moon and stars, that Kazan and Gray Wolf set
up the valley between the two ridges on a long hunt. It was the
beginning of that _wanderlust_ which always comes to the furred and
padded creatures of the wilderness immediately after the young-born of
early spring have left their mothers to find their own way in the big
world. They struck west from their winter home under the windfall in the
swamp. They hunted mostly at night and behind them they left a trail
marked by the partly eaten carcasses of rabbits and partridges. It was
the season of slaughter and not of hunger. Ten miles west of the swamp
they killed a fawn. This, too, they left after a single meal. Their
appetites became satiated with warm flesh and blood. They grew sleek and
fat and each day they basked longer in the warm sunshine. They had few
rivals. The lynxes were in the heavier timber to the south. There were
no wolves. Fisher-cat, marten and mink were numerous along the creek,
but these were neither swift-hunting nor long-fanged. One day they came
upon an old otter. He was a giant of his kind, turning a whitish gray
with the approach of summer. Kazan, grown fat and lazy, watched him
idly. Blind Gray Wolf sniffed at the fishy smell of him in the air.