and it was a wonderful world—a world of vast silence, empty of everything but the creatures of the wild. the nearest hudson’s bay post was a hundred miles away, and the first town of civilization was a straight three hundred to the south. two years before, tusoo, the cree trapper, had called this his domain. it had come down to him, as was the law of the forests, through generations of forefathers; but tusoo had been the last of his worn-out family; he had died of smallpox, and his wife and his children had died with him. since then no human foot had taken up his trails. the lynx had multiplied. the moose and caribou had gone unhunted by man. the beaver had built their homes undisturbed. the tracks of the black bear were as thick as the tracks of the deer farther south. and where once the deadfalls and poison-baits of tusoo had kept the wolves thinned down, there was no longer a menace for these mohekuns of the wilderness.
following the sun of this first wonderful day came the moon and the stars of baree’s first real night. it was a splendid night, and with it a full red moon sailed up over the forests, flooding the earth with a new kind of light, softer and more beautiful to baree. the wolf was strong in him, and he was restless. he had slept that day in the warmth of the sun, but he could not sleep in this glow of the moon. he nosed uneasily about gray wolf, who lay flat on her belly, her beautiful head alert, listening yearningly to the night sounds, and for the tonguing of kazan, who had slunk away like a shadow to hunt.
half a dozen times, as baree wandered about near the windfall, he heard a soft whir over his head, and once or twice he saw gray shadows floating swiftly through the air. they were the big northern owls swooping down to investigate him, and if he had been a rabbit instead of a wolf-dog whelp, his first night under the moon and stars would have been his last; for unlike wapoos, the rabbit, he was not cautious. gray wolf did not watch him closely. instinct told her that in these forests there was no great danger for baree except at the hands of man. in his veins ran the blood of the wolf. he was a hunter of all other wild creatures, but no other creature, either winged or fanged, hunted him.
in a way baree sensed this. he was not afraid of the owls. he was not afraid of the strange blood-curdling cries they made in the black spruce-tops. but once fear entered into him, and he scurried back to his mother. it was when one of the winged hunters of the air swooped down on a snowshoe rabbit, and the squealing agony of the doomed creature set his heart thumping like a little hammer. he felt in those cries the nearness of that one ever-present tragedy of the wild—death. he felt it again that night when, snuggled close to gray wolf, he listened to the fierce outcry of a wolf-pack that was close on the heels of a young caribou bull. and the meaning of it all, and the wild thrill of it all, came home to him early in the gray dawn when kazan returned, holding between his jaws a huge rabbit that was still kicking and squirming with life.
this rabbit was the climax in the first chapter of baree’s education. it was as if gray wolf and kazan had planned it all out, so that he might receive his first instruction in the art of killing. when kazan had dropped it, baree approached the big hare cautiously. the back of wapoos, the rabbit, was broken. his round eyes were glazed, and he had ceased to feel pain. but to baree, as he dug his tiny teeth into the heavy fur under wapoos’s throat, the hare was very much alive. the teeth did not go through into the flesh. with puppyish fierceness baree hung on. he thought that he was killing. he could feel the dying convulsions of wapoos. he could hear the last gasping breaths leaving the warm body, and he snarled and tugged until finally he fell back with a mouthful of fur. when he returned to the attack, wapoos was quite dead, and baree continued to bite and snarl until gray wolf came with her sharp fangs and tore the rabbit to pieces. after that followed the feast.
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 fore-shoulders 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 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 bit of forest and had peered in curiously, and with a growing desire.
on this day of his great battle its lure was over-powering. 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 stranger 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 nobody at all. kazan had never brought in anything like this, and for a full half-minute he remained very quiet, eyeing 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 bit 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 seen, 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.
papayuchisew started it, and with a single wild yelp baree went back in a heap, the owlet’s beak fastened like a red-hot vise in the soft flesh at the end of his nose. that one yelp of surprise and pain was baree’s first and last cry in the fight. the wolf surged in him; rage and the desire to kill possessed him. as papayuchisew hung on, he made a curious hissing sound; and as baree rolled and gnashed his teeth and fought to free himself from that amazing grip on his nose, fierce little snarls rose out of his throat.
for fully a minute baree had no use of his jaws. then, by accident, he wedged papayuchisew in a crotch of a low ground-shrub, and a bit of his nose gave way. he might have run then, but instead of that he was back at the owlet like a flash. flop went papayuchisew on his back, and baree buried his needle-like teeth in the bird’s breast. it was like trying to bite through a pillow, the feathers were so close and thick. deeper and deeper baree sank his fangs, and just as they were beginning to prick the owlet’s skin, papayuchisew—jabbing a little blindly with a beak that snapped sharply every time it closed—got him by the ear.
the pain of that hold was excruciating to baree, and he made a more desperate effort to get his teeth through his enemy’s thick armour of feathers. in the struggle they rolled under the low balsams to the edge of the ravine through which ran the creek. over the steep edge they plunged, and as they rolled and bumped to the bottom, baree loosed his hold. papayuchisew hung valiantly on, and when they reached the bottom he still had his grip on baree’s ear.
baree’s nose was bleeding; his ear felt as if it were being pulled from his head; and in this uncomfortable moment a newly awakened instinct made baby papayuchisew discover his wings as a fighting asset. an owl has never really begun to fight until he uses his wings, and with a joyous hissing, papayuchisew began beating his antagonist so fast and so viciously that baree was dazed. he was compelled to close his eyes, and he snapped blindly. for the first time since the battle began he felt a strong inclination to get away. he tried to tear himself free with his forepaws, but papayuchisew—slow to reason but of firm conviction—hung to baree’s ear like grim fate.
at this critical point, when the understanding of defeat was forming itself swiftly in baree’s mind, chance saved him. his fangs closed on one of the owlet’s tender feet. papayuchisew gave a sudden squeak. the ear was free at last—and with a snarl of triumph baree gave a vicious tug at papayuchisew’s leg.
in the excitement of battle he had not heard the rushing tumult of the creek close under them, and over the edge of a rock papayuchisew and he went together, the chill water of the rain-swollen stream muffling a final snarl and a final hiss of the two little fighters.
