ing and flesh-eating creature, and they stood close
over the rabbit, making no effort to end its struggles. Half a dozen
times Gray Wolf sniffed at the rabbit and then turned her blind face
toward Ba-ree. After the third or fourth time Kazan stretched himself
out on his belly a few feet away and watched the proceedings
attentively. Each time that Gray Wolf lowered her head to muzzle the
rabbit Ba-ree's little ears shot up expectantly. When he saw that
nothing happened and that his mother was not hurt he came a little
nearer. Soon he could reach out, stiff-legged and cautious, and touch
the furry thing that was not yet dead.

In a last spasmodic convulsion the big rabbit doubled up its rear legs
and gave a kick that sent Ba-ree sprawling back, yelping in terror. He
regained his feet and then, for the first time, anger and the desire to
retaliate took possession of him. The kick had completed his first
education. He came back with less caution, but stiffer-legged, and a
moment later had dug his tiny teeth in the rabbit's neck. He could feel
the throb of life in the soft body, the muscles of the dying rabbit
twitched convulsively under him, and he hung with his teeth until there
was no longer a tremor of life in his first kill. Gray Wolf was
delighted. She caressed Ba-ree with her tongue, and even Kazan
condescended to sniff approvingly of his son when he returned to the
rabbit. And never before had warm sweet blood tasted so good to Ba-ree
as it did to-day.

Swiftly Ba-ree developed from a blood-tasting into a flesh-eating
animal. One by one the mysteries of life were unfolded to him--the
mating-night chortle of the gray owl, the crash of a falling tree, the
roll of thunder, the rush of running water, the scream of a fisher-cat,
the mooing of the cow moose, and the distant call of his tribe. But
chief of all these mysteries that were already becoming a part of his
instinct was the mystery of scent. One day he wandered fifty yards away
from the windfall and his little nose touched the warm scent of a
rabbit. Instantly, without reasoning or further process of education, he
knew that to get at the sweet flesh and blood which he loved he must
follow the scent. He wriggled slowly along the trail until he came to a
big log, over which the rabbit had vaulted in a long leap, and from this
log he turned back. Each day after this he went on adventures of his
own. At first he was like an explorer without a compass in a vast and
un