|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 15
Baree did not travel far this night. The fact that his wound had come
with dusk, and his fight with Oohoomisew still later, filled him with
caution. Experience had taught him that the dark shadows and the black
pits in the forest were possible ambuscades of danger. He was no longer
afraid, as he had once been, but he had had fighting enough for a time,
and so he accepted circumspection as the better part of valor and held
himself aloof from the perils of darkness. It was a strange instinct
that made him seek his bed on the top of a huge rock up which he had
some difficulty in climbing. Perhaps it was a harkening back to the
days of long ago when Gray Wolf, in her first motherhood, sought refuge
at the summit of the Sun Rock which towered high above the forest world
of which she and Kazan were a part, and where later she was blinded in
her battle with the lynx.
Baree's rock, instead of rising for a hundred feet or more straight 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. But the call of the wild was struggling against odds. For in him
was the dog, with its generations of subdued and sleeping
instincts--and all that night the dog in him kept Baree to the top of
his rock.
Next morning Baree found many crayfish along the creek, and he feasted
on their succulent flesh until he felt that he would never be hungry
again. Nothing had tasted quite so good since he had eaten the
partridge of which he had robbed Sekoosew the ermine.
In the middle of the afternoon Baree came into a part of the forest
that was very quiet and very peaceful. The creek had deepened. In
places its banks swept out until they formed small ponds. Twice he made
considerable detours to get around these ponds. He traveled very
quietly, listening and watching. Not since the ill-fated day he had
left the old windfall had he felt quite so much at home as now. It
seemed to him that at last he was treading country which he knew, and
where he would find friends. Perhaps this was another miracle mystery
of instinct--of nature. For he was in old Beaver Tooth's domain. It was
here that his father and mother had hunted in the days before he was
born. It was not far from here that Kazan and Beaver Tooth had fought
that mighty duel under water, from which Kazan had escaped with his
life without another breath to lose.
Baree would never know these things. He would never know that he was
traveling over old trails. But something deep in him gripped him
strangely. He sniffed the air, as if in it he found the scent of
familiar things. It was only a faint breath--an indefinable promise
that brought him to the point of a mysterious anticipation.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|