He wriggled and thumped his
tail, and as he whined again he seemed to say.

"Let's forget the old trouble, Oochak. Let's be friends. I've got a
fine windfall--and I'll kill you a rabbit."

And still Oochak did not move or make a sound. At last Miki could
almost reach out with his forepaws and touch him. He dragged himself
still nearer, and his tail thumped harder.

"And I'll get you out of the trap," he may have been saying. "It's the
man-beast's trap--and I hate him."

And then, so suddenly that Miki had no chance to guard himself, Oochak
sprang the length of the trap-chain and was at him. With teeth and
razor-edged claws he tore deep gashes in Miki's nose. Even then the
blood of battle rose slowly in him, and he might have retreated had not
Oochak's teeth got a hold in his shoulder. With a roar he tried to
shake himself free, but Oochak held on. Then his jaws snapped at the
back of the fisher-cat's neck. When he was done Oochak was dead.

He slunk away, but in him there was no more the thrill of the victor.
He had killed, but in killing he had found no joy. Upon him--the
four-footed beast--had fallen at last the oppression of the thing that
drives men mad. He stood in the heart of a vast world, and for him that
world was empty. He was an outcast. His heart crying out for
comradeship, he found that all things feared him or hated him. He was a
pariah; a wanderer without a friend or a home. He did not reason these
things but the gloom of them settled upon him like black night.

He did not return to his windfall. In a little open he sat on his
haunches, listening to the night sounds, and watching the stars as they
came out. There was an early moon, and as it came up over the forest, a
great throbbing red disc that seemed filled with life, he howled
mournfully in the face of it. He wandered out into a big burn a little
later, and there the night was like day, so clear that his shadow
followed him and all other things about him cast shadows, And then, all
at once, he caught in the night wind a sound which he had heard many
times before.

It came from far away, and it was like a whisper at first, an echo of
strange voices riding on the wind, A hundred times he had heard that
cry of the wolves. Since Maheegun, the she-wolf, had gashed his
shoulder so fiercely away back in the days of his puppyhood he had
evaded the path of that cry. He had learned, in a way, to hate it. But
he could not wipe out entirely the thrill t