Olaf Baker

“ The wolf-tide was rising within him, without him. The moon drew it, the dance, the wild notes that sobbed and gasped in his throat! They could not help themselves any more than he could help himself. They were driven by a power stronger than themselves. As he danced he saw the great ring of dusky bodies, and glimmering eyes—the white wolf and Kiopo in the centre—saw them as one sees things in a dream. ”

“ Shasta sat in the mouth of the cave watching them and laughing softly to himself. He had known many a lot of wolf-brothers, and they were always the same funny, fat, frolicsome little rascals until they grew too old to frolic, and began to get their fighting fangs and be ready for the fierce work of the grown-up world. Shasta loved all his foster-brothers and never forgot them, even after they had gone out into the world. And not a single wolf-brother ever forgot him, or would have refused to fight for him to the death if he were in danger. ”

“ He was half-way up the mountain, when, all at once, he stopped, and swung his nose into the wind. Something was abroad now—something with a warmer, thicker scent than the sharp tang of the spruces. What was it? There was a smell of wolf in it, and yet again something which was not wolf. It was a mixture of scents so finely jumbled together that only a nose like Gomposh's could have disentangled them. In spite of his immense knowledge of the thousand ways in which the wilderness kindreds spill themselves upon the air, the old bear was puzzled. ”

“ And the brambles reached their twisted tangles this way and that in a bewildering labyrinth of thorns. While, dotting all the upper slopes, the junipers, large and little, stood up in dusk battalions above the lonely land. None but the wild furred feet of the wilderness ever went that way. In all its mazy length the print of human moccasins had never slurred the undergrowth trails. Even the wild creatures themselves did not greatly frequent it, by reason of its mighty growth of thorns, so that even among the long solitudes of Carboona, it was a loneliness apart. ”