The Call came to Baree like a thief entering slowly and cautiously into a forbidden place.  He did not understand it at first.  It made him nervous and uneasy, so restless that Nepeese frequently heard him whine softly in his sleep.  He was waiting for something.  What was it?  Pierrot knew, and smiled in his inscrutable way.

And then it came.  It was night, a glorious night filled with moon and stars, under which the earth was whitening with a film of frost, when they heard the first hunt call of the wolves.  Now and then during the summer there had come the lone wolf howl, but this was the tonguing of the pack; and as it floated through the vast silence and mystery of the night, a song of savagery that had come with each Red Moon down through unending ages, Pierrot knew that at last had come that for which Baree had been waiting.

In an instant Baree had sensed it.  His muscles grew taut as pieces of stretched rope as he stood up in the moonlight, facing the direction from which floated the mystery and thrill of the sound.  They could hear him whining softly; and Pierrot, bending down so that he caught the light of the night properly, could see him trembling.

“It is Mee-Koo!” he said in a whisper to Nepeese.

That was it, the call of the blood that was running swift in Baree’s veins—­not alone the call of his species, but the call of Kazan and Gray Wolf and of his forbears for generations unnumbered.  It was the voice of his people.  So Pierrot had whispered, and he was right.  In the golden night the Willow was waiting, for it was she who had gambled most, and it was she who must lose or win.  She uttered no sound, replied not to the low voice of Pierrot, but held her breath and watched Baree as he slowly faded away, step by step, into the shadows.  In a few moments more he was gone.  It was then that she stood straight, and flung back her head, with eyes that glowed in rivalry with the stars.

“Baree!” she called.  “Baree!  Baree!  Baree!”

He must have been near the edge of the forest, for she had drawn a slow, waiting breath or two before he was and he whined up into her face.  Nepeese put her hands to his head.

“You are right, mon pere,” she said.  “He will go to the wolves, but he will come back.  He will never leave me for long.”  With one hand still on Baree’s head, she pointed with the other into the pitlike blackness of the forest.  “Go to them, Baree!” she whispered.  “But you must come back.  You must.  Cheamao!”

With Pierrot she went into the cabin; the door closed silence.  In it he could hear the soft night sounds:  the clinking of the chains to which the dogs were fastened, the restless movement of their bodies, the throbbing whir of a pair of wings, the breath of the night itself.  For to him this night, even in its stillness, seemed alive.  Again he went into it, and close to the forest once more he stopped to listen.  The wind had turned, and on it rode the wailing, blood-thrilling cry of the pack.  Far off to the west a lone wolf turned his muzzle to the sky and answered that gathering call of his clan.  And then out of the east came a voice, so far beyond the cabin that it was like an echo dying away in the vastness of the night.