der those wings Baree's mind worked with the swift instincts of the
killer. Suddenly he changed his hold, burying his fangs into the under
part of Oohoomisew's body. They sank into three inches of feathers.
Swift as Baree had been, Oohoomisew was equally swift to take advantage
of his opportunity. In an instant he had swooped upward. There was a
jerk, a rending of feathers from flesh--and Baree was alone on the
field of battle.

Baree had not killed, but he had conquered. His first great day--or
night--had come. The world was filled with a new promise for him, as
vast as the night itself. And after a moment he sat back on his
haunches, sniffing the air for his beaten enemy. Then, as if defying
the feathered monster to come back and fight to the end, he pointed his
sharp little muzzle up to the stars and sent forth his first babyish
wolf howl into the night.

CHAPTER 6

Baree's fight with Oohoomisew was good medicine for him. It not only
gave him great confidence in himself, but it also cleared the fever of
ugliness from his blood. He no longer snapped and snarled at things as
he went on through the night.

It was a wonderful night. The moon was straight overhead, and the sky
was filled with stars, so that in the open spaces the light was almost
like that of day, except that it was softer and more beautiful. It was
very still. There was no wind in the treetops, and it seemed to Baree
that the howl he had given must have echoed to the end of the world.

Now and then Baree heard a sound--and always he stopped, attentive and
listening. Far away he heard the long, soft mooing of a cow moose. He
heard a great splashing in the water of a small lake that he came to,
and once there came to him the sharp cracking of horn against horn--two
bucks settling a little difference of opinion a quarter of a mile away.
But it was always the wolf howl that made him sit and listen longest,
his heart beating with a strange impulse which he did not as yet
understand. It was the call of his breed, growing in him slowly but
insistently.

He was still a wanderer--pupamootao, the Indians call it. It is this
"wander spirit" that inspires for a time nearly every creature of the
wild as soon as it is able to care for itself--nature's scheme,
perhaps, for doing away with too close family relations and possibly
dangerous interbreeding. Baree, like the young wolf seeking new hunting
grounds, or the young fox discovering a new world, had no re