great woods
appeared to hold themselves in such deep untroubled peace. Nothing broke
their stillness save the occasional sharp chirr of a chipmunk, or the
tapp, tapp of the little black-and-white wood-peckers on some hollow
limb. Night came, and the stillness only deepened,--night--and the
soundless glitter of the stars.

Once only Dusty Star saw, or fancied he saw, a wolf stand in a clear
space in the glimmer of the coming dawn. And at first, thinking it was
Kiopo, he had not moved. But when at last, he had gone forward to see,
he found the place where it had stood empty.

Slowly, day by day, the sense of danger passed. Kiopo went off hunting
for longer and longer distances. But he avoided the upper slopes of the
Carboona, and followed trails that led him well away. And not again,
either in late twilight, or early dawn, did Dusty Star catch the shadows
at their old illusive game. Only one thing remained, and that was the
very plain objection which Kiopo had to Dusty Star going up into
Carboona at any time of the day. Now when Kiopo objected to anything
strongly, his ways of expressing himself were perfectly clear. Not only
his eyes, his ears and his mouth, but his whole body said _No_ in the
plainest possible way. Dusty Star had no excuse for not understanding
that Kiopo objected to his going up Carboona. Yet the more definitely
Kiopo objected, the more Dusty Star wanted to go.

He was moving very quickly now, because he was anxious to get as far as
possible, in case Kiopo discovered where he had gone, and came to fetch
him back. Kiopo was doubtless very wise, and knew the forest better than
any one else; yet Dusty Star was quite sure that he had a wisdom of his
own, and he liked sometimes to set the Indian "Yes" against the wolf
"No." Now, as he mounted higher and higher into an unexplored world, he
enjoyed the feeling of having asserted his right to decide things for
himself. And every time he stopped to look back, he could see a vaster
tract of forest and hills, lying out and out to a distance that had no
end.

He was above the forest now, and had entered the borders of the great
barren where the waterfowl had their homes along the solitary pools. He
pushed on rapidly. Except the flocks of wildfowl, he saw no other life.
Here and there, in patches on the rising grounds, he came upon the
blueberries, beginning to be ripe. But the bears had not visited them
yet, and there were no signs of other large game. It was