Until Baree had seen the otters at play in the creek, his conceptions of the forests had not gone beyond his own kind, and such creatures as owls and rabbits and small feathered things.  The otters had not frightened him, because he still measured things by size, and Nekik was not half as big as Kazan.  But the bear was a monster beside which Kazan would have stood a mere pygmy.  He was big.  If nature was taking this way of introducing Baree to the fact that there were more important creatures in the forests than dogs and wolves and owls and crayfish, she was driving the point home with a little more than necessary emphasis.  For Wakayoo, the bear, weighed six hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce.  He was fat and sleek from a month’s feasting on fish.  His shiny coat was like black velvet in the moonlight, and he walked with a curious rolling motion with his head hung low.  The horror grew when he stopped broadside in the carpet of sand not more than ten feet from the rock under which Baree was shivering.

It was quite evident that Wakayoo had caught scent of him in the air.  Baree could hear him sniff—­could hear his breathing—­caught the starlight flashing in his reddish-brown eyes as they swung suspiciously toward the big boulder.  If Baree could have known then that he—­his insignificant little self—­was making that monster actually nervous and uneasy, he would have given a yelp of joy.  For Wakayoo, in spite of his size, was somewhat of a coward when it came to wolves.  And Baree carried the wolf scent.  It grew stronger in Wakayoo’s nose; and just then, as if to increase whatever nervousness was growing in him, there came from out of the forest behind him a long and wailing howl.

With an audible grunt, Wakayoo moved on.  Wolves were pests, he argued.  They wouldn’t stand up and fight.  They’d snap and yap at one’s heels for hours at a time, and were always out of the way quicker than a wink when one turned on them.  What was the use of hanging around where there were wolves, on a beautiful night like this?  He lumbered on decisively.  Baree could hear him splashing heavily through the water of the creek.  Not until then did the wolf dog draw a full breath.  It was almost a gasp.

But the excitement was not over for the night.  Baree had chosen his bed at a place where the animals came down to drink, and where they crossed from one of the creek forests to the other.  Not long after the bear had disappeared he heard a heavy crunching in the sand, and hoofs rattling against stones, and a bull moose with a huge sweep of antlers passed through the open space in the moonlight.  Baree stared with popping eyes, for if Wakayoo had weighed six hundred pounds, this gigantic creature whose legs were so long that it seemed to be walking on stilts weighed at least twice as much.  A cow moose followed, and then a calf.

The calf seemed all legs.  It was too much for Baree, and he shoved himself farther and farther back under the rock until he lay wedged in like a sardine in a box.  And there he lay until morning.