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 unknown world.  Each day he encountered something new, always wonderful, frequently terrifying.  But his terrors grew less and less and his confidence correspondingly greater.  As he found that none of the things he feared did him any harm he became more and more bold in his investigations.  And his appearance was changing, as well as his view of things.  His round roly-poly body was taking a different form.  He became lithe and quick.  The yellow of his coat darkened, and there was a whitish-gray streak along his back like that along Kazan’s.  He had his mother’s under-throat and her beautiful grace of head.  Otherwise he was a true son of Kazan.  His limbs gave signs of future strength and massiveness.  He was broad across the chest.  His eyes were wide apart, with a little red in the lower corners.  The forest people know what to expect of husky pups who early develop that drop of red.  It is a warning that they are born of the wild and that their mothers, or fathers, are of the savage hunt-packs.  In Ba-ree that tinge of red was so pronounced that it could mean but one thing.  While he was almost half dog, the wild had claimed him forever.

Not until the day of his first real battle with a living creature did Ba-ree come fully into his inheritance.  He had gone farther than usual from the windfall—­fully a hundred yards.  Here he found a new wonder.  It was the creek.  He had heard it before and he had looked down on it from afar—­from a distance of fifty yards at least.  But to-day he ventured going to the edge of it, and there he stood for a long time, with the water rippling and singing at his feet, gazing across it into the new world that he saw.  Then he moved cautiously along the stream.  He had not gone a dozen steps when there was a furious fluttering close to him, and one of the fierce big-eyed jays of the Northland was directly in his path.  It could not fly.  One of its wings dragged, probably broken in a struggle with some one of the smaller preying beasts.  But for an instant it was a most startling and defiant bit of life to Ba-ree.