a heart beats it is very much like our own in the final analysis of
things. To see a bird singing on a twig means but little; but to live a
season with that bird, to be with it in courting days, in matehood and
motherhood, to understand its griefs as well as its gladness means a
great deal. And in my books it is my desire to tell of the lives of the
wild things which I know as they are actually lived. It is not my
desire to humanize them. If we are to love wild animals so much that we
do not want to kill them we MUST KNOW THEM AS THEY ACTUALLY LIVE. And
in their lives, in the facts of their lives, there is so much of real
and honest romance and tragedy, so much that makes them akin to
ourselves that the animal biographer need not step aside from the paths
of actuality to hold one's interest.

Perhaps rather tediously I have come to the few words I want to say
about Baree, the hero of this book. Baree, after all, is only another
Kazan. For it was Kazan I found in the way I have described--a bad dog,
a killer about to be shot to death by his master when chance, and my
own faith in him, gave him to me.

We traveled together for many thousands of miles through the
northland--on trails to the Barren Lands, to Hudson's Bay and to the
Arctic. Kazan--the bad dog, the half-wolf, the killer--was the best
four-legged friend I ever had. He died near Fort MacPherson, on the
Peel River, and is buried there. And Kazan was the father of Baree;
Gray Wolf, the full-blooded wolf, was his mother. Nepeese, the Willow,
still lives near God's Lake; and it was in the country of Nepeese and
her father that for three lazy months I watched the doings at Beaver
Town, and went on fishing trips with Wakayoo, the bear. Sometimes I
have wondered if old Beaver Tooth himself did not in some way
understand that I had made his colony safe for his people. It was