ters of the highest importance, he was plying him
with questions. It did not discourage him in the least that Kiopo
received the information with the utmost unconcern, and never answered
one of the questions. Dusty Star concluded that baby wolves were like
that. They might indeed be full of wisdom, but they expressed it solely
by means of their teeth.

Kiopo left the marks of his teeth upon everything that he could bite.
When Dusty Star's mother, Nikana, found them upon one of her best bead
moccasins, so that many of the beads were missing, she gave him a tap
with the moccasin that made him yelp with pain. But when Blue Wings,
Dusty Star's baby sister, was, one fine day, found lying carelessly
about on the floor of the tepee, to Kiopo's intense delight, and began
to be treated like the beads, Nikana, roused by her screaming, gave
Kiopo such a shaking, and such a cuffing between the shakes, that he
really thought his last hour had come, and yelled as piercingly as Blue
Wings herself. Not that he wanted to hurt things for the sake of
hurting. He merely wanted to worry them, and to bite and bite, and bite.

It was all very strange after the old life in the Carboona, where the
blue jays made such loud remarks to each other from thicket to thicket,
and whoever hadn't got wings, went upon four feet. But here the tall,
human creatures went always upon two only, and it was only the little
Dusty Star that understood stomach-walking on all fours, and making
companionable noises in the throat. As for Blue Wings--the cub that
yelled when you bit her--she was a poor imitation of a human, though
possibly with a high food value, if only they would let you try.

One of the hardest things to get used to was the tepee itself, with its
peculiar Indian smells, so utterly different to the badger-hole where
the only scent was the good home smell of the family, or perhaps of some
fine old bone that had had many teeth at work upon it, and was trying
hard to be dead. It was some time before Kiopo grew accustomed to the
new smells, so as to be able to sort them out as belonging to the
various objects which gave them. And when night had fallen, it was a
dismal experience to wake up and see the inside of the tepee full of
unfamiliar shapes in the glimmer of the moon. And then a great fear
would take him, and he would lift the thin pipe of his cub voice and
yelp aloud, because he wanted his mother, and because there lay at the
back of his head a