quite probably the most wretched pup in the
world. He was also completely turned around. In vain he looked about
him for some familiar mark--something that might guide him back to his
windfall home. Everything was strange. He did not know that the water
had flung him out on the wrong side of the stream, and that to reach
the windfall he would have to cross it again. He whined, but that was
as loud as his voice rose. Gray Wolf could have heard his barking, for
the windfall was not more than two hundred and fifty yards up the
stream. But the wolf in Baree held him silent, except for his low
whining.

Striking the main shore, Baree began going downstream. This was away
from the windfall, and each step that he took carried him farther and
farther from home. Every little while he stopped and listened. The
forest was deeper. It was growing blacker and more mysterious. Its
silence was frightening. At the end of half an hour Baree would even
have welcomed Papayuchisew. And he would not have fought him--he would
have inquired, if possible, the way back home.

Baree was fully three-quarters of a mile from the windfall when he came
to a point where the creek split itself into two channels. He had but
one choice to follow--the stream that flowed a little south and east.
This stream did not run swiftly. It was not filled with shimmering
riffles, and rocks about which the water sang and foamed. It grew
black, like the forest. It was still and deep. Without knowing it,
Baree was burying himself deeper and deeper into Tusoo's old trapping
grounds. Since Tusoo had died, they had lain undisturbed except for the
wolves, for Gray Wolf and Kazan had not hunted on this side of the
waterway--and the wolves themselves preferred the more open country for
the chase.

Suddenly Baree found himself at the edge of a deep, dark pool in which
the water lay still as oil, and his heart nearly jumped out of his body
when a great, sleek, shining creature sprang out from almost under his
nose and landed with a tremendous splash in the center of it. It was
Nekik, the otter.

The otter had not heard Baree, and in another moment Napanekik, his
wife, came sailing out of a patch of gloom, and behind her came three
little otters, leaving behind them four shimmering wakes in the
oily-looking water. What happened after that made Baree forget for a
few minutes that he was lost. Nekik had disappeared under the surface,
and now he came up directly under his uns