up,
was possibly as high as a man's head. It was in the edge of the creek
bottom, with the spruce forest close at his back. For many hours he did
not sleep, but lay keenly alert, his ears tuned to catch every sound
that came out of the dark world about him. There was more than
curiosity in his alertness tonight. His education had broadened
immensely in one way: he had learned that he was a very small part of
all this wonderful earth that lay under the stars and the moon, and he
was keenly alive with the desire to become better acquainted with it
without any more fighting or hurt. Tonight he knew what it meant when
he saw now and then gray shadows float silently out of the forest into
the moonlight--the owls, monsters of the breed with which he had
fought. He heard the crackling of hoofed feet and the smashing of heavy
bodies in the underbrush. He heard again the mooing of the moose.
Voices came to him that he had not heard before--the sharp yap-yap-yap
of a fox, the unearthly, laughing cry of a great Northern loon on a
lake half a mile away, the scream of a lynx that came floating through
miles of forest, the low, soft croaks of the nighthawks between himself
and the stars. He heard strange whisperings in the
treetops--whisperings of the wind. And once, in the heart of a dead
stillness, a buck whistled shrilly close behind his rock--and at the
wolf scent in the air shot away in a terror-stricken gray streak.

All these sounds held their new meaning for Baree. Swiftly he was
coming into his knowledge of the wilderness. His eyes gleamed; his
blood thrilled. Often for many minutes at a time he scarcely moved. But
of all the sounds that came to him, the wolf cry thrilled him most.
Again and again he listened to it. At times it was far away, so far
that it was like a whisper, dying away almost before it reached him.
Then again it would come to him full-throated, hot with the breath of
the chase, calling him to the red thrill of the hunt, to the wild orgy
of torn flesh and running blood--calling, calling, calling. That was
it, calling him to his own kin, to the bone of his bone and the flesh
of his flesh--to the wild, fierce hunting packs of his mother's tribe!
It was Gray Wolf's voice seeking for him in the night--Gray Wolf's
blood inviting him to the Brotherhood of the Pack.

Baree trembled as he listened. In his throat he whined softly. He edged
to the sheer face of the rock. He wanted to go; nature was urging him
to go.