It was a shock to have the earth go out from under his feet like that, but Baree did not yelp.  The wolf was dominant in him again.  It urged him to remain where he was, making no move, no sound—­scarcely breathing.  The voices were over him; the strange feet almost stumbled in the hole where he lay.  Looking out of his dark hiding place, he could see one of his enemies.  It was Nepeese, the Willow.  She was standing so that a last glow of the day fell upon her face.  Baree did not take his eyes from her.

Above his pain there rose in him a strange and thrilling fascination.  The girl put her two hands to her mouth and in a voice that was soft and plaintive and amazingly comforting to his terrified little heart, cried: 

“Uchimoo—­Uchimoo—­Uchimoo!”

And then he heard another voice; and this voice, too, was far less terrible than many sounds he had listened to in the forests.

“We cannot find him, Nepeese,” the voice was saying.  “He has crawled off to die.  It is too bad.  Come.”

Where Baree had stood in the edge of the open Pierrot paused and pointed to a birch sapling that had been cut clean off by the Willow’s bullet.  Nepeese understood.  The sapling, no larger than her thumb, had turned her shot a trifle and had saved Baree from instant death.  She turned again, and called: 

“Uchimoo—­Uchimoo—­Uchimoo!”

Her eyes were no longer filled with the thrill of slaughter.

“He would not understand that,” said Pierrot, leading the way across the open.  “He is wild—­born of the wolves.  Perhaps he was of Koomo’s lead bitch, who ran away to hunt with the packs last winter.”

“And he will die—­”

“Ayetun—­yes, he will die.”

But Baree had no idea of dying.  He was too tough a youngster to be shocked to death by a bullet passing through the soft flesh of his foreleg.  That was what had happened.  His leg was torn to the bone, but the bone itself was untouched.  He waited until the moon had risen before he crawled out of his hole.

His leg had grown stiff, but it had stopped bleeding, though his whole body was racked by a terrible pain.  A dozen Papayuchisews, all holding right to his ears and nose, could not have hurt him more.  Every time he moved, a sharp twinge shot through him; and yet he persisted in moving.  Instinctively he felt that by traveling away from the hole he would get away from danger.  This was the best thing that could have happened to him, for a little later a porcupine came wandering along, chattering to itself in its foolish, good-humored way, and fell with a fat thud into the hole.  Had Baree remained, he would have been so full of quills that he must surely have died.