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Page 4
So Baree came to understand that to eat meant to kill, and as other
days and nights passed, there grew in him swiftly the hunger for flesh.
In this he was the true wolf. From Kazan he had taken other and
stronger inheritances of the dog. He was magnificently black, which in
later days gave him the name of Kusketa Mohekun--the black wolf. On his
breast was a white star. His right ear was tipped with white. His tail,
at six weeks, was bushy and hung low. It was a wolf's tail. His ears
were Gray Wolf's ears--sharp, short, pointed, always alert. His
foreshoulders gave promise of being splendidly like Kazan's, and when
he stood up he was like the trace dog, except that he always stood
sidewise to the point or object he was watching. This, again, was the
wolf, for a dog faces the direction in which he is looking intently.
One brilliant night, when Baree was two months old, and when the sky
was filled with stars and a June moon so bright that it seemed scarcely
higher than the tall spruce tops, Baree settled back on his haunches
and howled. It was a first effort. But there was no mistake in the note
of it. It was the wolf howl. But a moment later when Baree slunk up to
Kazan, as if deeply ashamed of his effort, he was wagging his tail in
an unmistakably apologetic manner. And this again was the dog. If
Tusoo, the dead Indian trapper, could have seen him then, he would have
judged him by that wagging of his tail. It revealed the fact that deep
in his heart--and in his soul, if we can concede that he had one--Baree
was a dog.
In another way Tusoo would have found judgment of him. At two months
the wolf whelp has forgotten how to play. He is a slinking part of the
wilderness, already at work preying on creatures smaller and more
helpless than himself. Baree still played. In his excursions away from
the windfall he had never gone farther than the creek, a hundred yards
from where his mother lay. He had helped to tear many dead and dying
rabbits into pieces. He believed, if he thought upon the matter at all,
that he was exceedingly fierce and courageous. But it was his ninth
week before he felt his spurs and fought his terrible battle with the
young owl in the edge of the thick forest.
The fact that Oohoomisew, the big snow owl, had made her nest in a
broken stub not far from the windfall was destined to change the whole
course of Baree's life, just as the blinding of Gray Wolf had changed
hers, and a man's club had changed Kazan's. The creek ran close past
the stub, which had been shriven by lightning; and this stub stood in a
still, dark place in the forest, surrounded by tall, black spruce and
enveloped in gloom even in broad day. Many times Baree had gone to the
edge of this mysterious part of the forest and had peered in curiously,
and with a growing desire.
On this day of his great battle its lure was overpowering. Little by
little he entered into it, his eyes shining brightly and his ears alert
for the slightest sounds that might come out of it. His heart beat
faster. The gloom enveloped him more. He forgot the windfall and Kazan
and Gray Wolf. Here before him lay the thrill of adventure. He heard
strange sounds, but very soft sounds, as if made by padded feet and
downy wings, and they filled him with a thrilling expectancy. Under his
feet there were no grass or weeds or flowers, but a wonderful brown
carpet of soft evergreen needles. They felt good to his feet, and were
so velvety that he could not hear his own movement.
He was fully three hundred yards from the windfall when he passed
Oohoomisew's stub and into a thick growth of young balsams. And
there--directly in his path--crouched the monster!
Papayuchisew [Young Owl] was not more than a third as large as Baree.
But he was a terrifying-looking object. To Baree he seemed all head and
eyes. He could see no body at all. Kazan had never brought in anything
like this, and for a full half-minute he remained very quiet, eying it
speculatively. Papayuchisew did not move a feather. But as Baree
advanced, a cautious step at a time, the bird's eyes grew bigger and
the feathers about his head ruffled up as if stirred by a puff of wind.
He came of a fighting family, this little Papayuchisew--a savage,
fearless, and killing family--and even Kazan would have taken note of
those ruffling feathers.
With a space of two feet between them, the pup and the owlet eyed each
other. In that moment, if Gray Wolf could have been there, she might
have said to Baree: "Use your legs--and run!" And Oohoomisew, the old
owl, might have said to Papayuchisew: "You little fool--use your wings
and fly!"
They did neither--and the fight began.
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