ad built their
homes--undisturbed. The tracks of the black bear were as thick as the
tracks of the deer farther south. And where once the deadfalls and
poison baits of Tusoo had kept the wolves thinned down, there was no
longer a menace for these mohekuns of the wilderness.

Following the sun of this first wonderful day came the moon and the
stars of Baree's first real night. It was a splendid night, and with it
a full red moon sailed up over the forests, flooding the earth with a
new kind of light, softer and more beautiful to Baree. The wolf was
strong in him, and he was restless. He had slept that day in the warmth
of the sun, but he could not sleep in this glow of the moon. He nosed
uneasily about Gray Wolf, who lay flat on her belly, her beautiful head
alert, listening yearningly to the night sounds, and for the tonguing
of Kazan, who had slunk away like a shadow to hunt.

Half a dozen times, as Baree wandered about near the windfall, he heard
a soft whir over his head, and once or twice he saw gray shadows
floating swiftly through the air. They were the big northern owls
swooping down to investigate him, and if he had been a rabbit instead
of a wolf dog whelp, his first night under the moon and stars would
have been his last; for unlike Wapoos, the rabbit, he was not cautious.
Gray Wolf did not watch him closely. Instinct told her that in these
forests there was no great danger for Baree except at the hands of man.
In his veins ran the blood of the wolf. He was a hunter of all other
wild creatures, but no other creature, either winged or fanged, hunted
him.

In a way Baree sensed this. He was not afraid of the owls. He was not
afraid of the strange bloodcurdling cries they made in the black spruce
tops. But once fear entered into him, and he scurried back to his
mother. It was when one of the winged hunters of the air swooped down
on a snowshoe rabbit, and the squealing agony of the doomed creature
set his heart thumping like a little hammer. He felt in those cries the
nearness of that one ever-present tragedy of the wild--death. He felt
it again that night when, snuggled close to Gray Wolf, he listened to
the fierce outcry of a wolf pack that was close on the heels of a young
caribou bull. And the meaning of it all, and the wild thrill of it all,
came home to him early in the gray dawn when Kazan returned, holding
between his jaws a huge rabbit that was still kicking and squirming
with life.

This rabbit was