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Page 8
Until Baree had seen the otters at play in the creek, his conceptions
of the forests had not gone beyond his own kind, and such creatures as
owls and rabbits and small feathered things. The otters had not
frightened him, because he still measured things by size, and Nekik was
not half as big as Kazan. But the bear was a monster beside which Kazan
would have stood a mere pygmy. He was big. If nature was taking this
way of introducing Baree to the fact that there were more important
creatures in the forests than dogs and wolves and owls and crayfish,
she was driving the point home with a little more than necessary
emphasis. For Wakayoo, the bear, weighed six hundred pounds if he
weighed an ounce. He was fat and sleek from a month's feasting on fish.
His shiny coat was like black velvet in the moonlight, and he walked
with a curious rolling motion with his head hung low. The horror grew
when he stopped broadside in the carpet of sand not more than ten feet
from the rock under which Baree was shivering.
It was quite evident that Wakayoo had caught scent of him in the air.
Baree could hear him sniff--could hear his breathing--caught the
starlight flashing in his reddish-brown eyes as they swung suspiciously
toward the big boulder. If Baree could have known then that he--his
insignificant little self--was making that monster actually nervous and
uneasy, he would have given a yelp of joy. For Wakayoo, in spite of his
size, was somewhat of a coward when it came to wolves. And Baree
carried the wolf scent. It grew stronger in Wakayoo's nose; and just
then, as if to increase whatever nervousness was growing in him, there
came from out of the forest behind him a long and wailing howl.
With an audible grunt, Wakayoo moved on. Wolves were pests, he argued.
They wouldn't stand up and fight. They'd snap and yap at one's heels
for hours at a time, and were always out of the way quicker than a wink
when one turned on them. What was the use of hanging around where there
were wolves, on a beautiful night like this? He lumbered on decisively.
Baree could hear him splashing heavily through the water of the creek.
Not until then did the wolf dog draw a full breath. It was almost a
gasp.
But the excitement was not over for the night. Baree had chosen his bed
at a place where the animals came down to drink, and where they crossed
from one of the creek forests to the other. Not long after the bear had
disappeared he heard a heavy crunching in the sand, and hoofs rattling
against stones, and a bull moose with a huge sweep of antlers passed
through the open space in the moonlight. Baree stared with popping
eyes, for if Wakayoo had weighed six hundred pounds, this gigantic
creature whose legs were so long that it seemed to be walking on stilts
weighed at least twice as much. A cow moose followed, and then a calf.
The calf seemed all legs. It was too much for Baree, and he shoved
himself farther and farther back under the rock until he lay wedged in
like a sardine in a box. And there he lay until morning.
CHAPTER 4
When Baree ventured forth from under his rock at the beginning of the
next day, he was a much older puppy than when he met Papayuchisew, the
young owl, in his path near the old windfall. If experience can be made
to take the place of age, he had aged a great deal in the last
forty-eight hours. In fact, he had passed almost out of puppyhood. He
awoke with a new and much broader conception of the world. It was a big
place. It was filled with many things, of which Kazan and Gray Wolf
were not the most important. The monsters he had seen on the moonlit
plot of sand had roused in him a new kind of caution, and the one
greatest instinct of beasts--the primal understanding that it is the
strong that prey upon the weak--was wakening swiftly in him. As yet he
quite naturally measured brute force and the menace of things by size
alone. Thus the bear was more terrible than Kazan, and the moose was
more terrible than the bear.
It was quite fortunate for Baree that this instinct did not go to the
limit in the beginning and make him understand that his own breed--the
wolf--was most feared of all the creatures, claw, hoof, and wing, of
the forests. Otherwise, like the small boy who thinks he can swim
before he has mastered a stroke, he might somewhere have jumped in
beyond his depth and had his head chewed off.
Very much alert, with the hair standing up along his spine, and a
little growl in his throat, Baree smelled of the big footprints made by
the bear and the moose. It was the bear scent that made him growl. He
followed the tracks to the edge of the creek. After that he resumed his
wandering, and also his hunt for food.
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