had been filled with a great yearning to follow his father. Nature was
hard at work trying to overcome its handicap now. It was struggling to
impress on Baree that the time had now come when he must seek his own
food. The fact impinged itself upon him slowly but steadily, and he
began to think of the three or four shellfish he had caught and
devoured on the stony creek bar near the windfall. He also remembered
the open clamshell he had found, and the lusciousness of the tender
morsel inside it. A new excitement began to possess him. He became, all
at once, a hunter.

With the thinning out of the forest the creek grew more shallow. It ran
again over bars of sand and stones, and Baree began to nose along the
edge of the shallows. For a long time he had no success. The few
crayfish that he saw were exceedingly lively and elusive, and all the
clamshells were shut so tight that even Kazan's powerful jaws would
have had difficulty in smashing them. It was almost noon when he caught
his first crayfish, about as big as a man's forefinger. He devoured it
ravenously. The taste of food gave him fresh courage. He caught two
more crayfish during the afternoon. It was almost dusk when he stirred
a young rabbit out from under a cover of grass. If he had been a month
older, he could have caught it. He was still very hungry, for three
crayfish--scattered through the day--had not done much to fill the
emptiness that was growing steadily in him.

With the approach of night Baree's fears and great loneliness returned.
Before the day had quite gone he found soft bed of sand. Since his
fight with Papayuchisew, he had traveled a long distance, and the rock
under which he made his bed this night was at least eight or nine miles
from the windfall. It was in the open of the creek bottom, with and
when the moon rose, and the stars filled the sky, Baree could look out