.

Where he went Dusty Star could not tell. He watched and watched; but
Kiopo always eluded him at the coming-on of dusk. Mere hunting did not
account for it. The kills he made were not numerous. Often he brought
back what barely sufficed for their needs. It was only too clear that
something beyond mere hunting occupied his mind.

What made the thing still more peculiar was that, wherever it was Kiopo
went, there he also howled. Night after night, about an hour after
sundown, Dusty Star would hear the familiar voice raised in melancholy
wailing in the distance, as if it resounded from the sides of a gorge.

And as he lay awake, listening to the woeful sound, he would hear, ever
and anon, dark voices out of the north, that came clanging above the
hollow woods, and making the silence quake. And though he told himself
that it was only the first flights of the geese, he could not get rid of
the feeling that other voices went along the middle sky, and that the
dark was haunted with wings.

At last he determined to discover where it was that Kiopo went to do his
howling, and what happened when he howled. So, one evening, when the
wolf, as was his custom, slunk into the shadow of the woods, Dusty Star,
on noiseless moccasins, disappeared also. He kept Kiopo in sight for
some time without his knowledge. Then, when at last his form became
indistinguishable in the gloom, he followed as best he could the
direction he believed he had taken.

Due south-west from the camp, a high spur of rock jutted from the
mountain at the side of an immense gorge. It struck boldly out like an
ocean promontory; and on nights when the wind was high, it would have
been easy to imagine that the deepening roar which rose from the
straining spruce woods beneath was the welter and crash of a rising sea.

Dusty Star had seen the place several times in the day-time, and it
struck him now that it would be a likely spot for Kiopo to choose for
his nightly performance. The trail thither lay through thick forest and
was not an easy one to follow. But the boy had a strong sense of
direction, and every time he reached an open space between the trees, he
took his bearings from the stars. As he went, he listened intently for
the first notes of Kiopo's singing, and before he had travelled half the
distance, they came. In the deep stillness of the night, the call
sounded comparatively close. There could be little mistake as to its
direction, which was either th