“Yes,” admited Sneaky, “and he said something more. If you bring Little Brother before him, he’ll order the whole pack to pounce on him and kill him.”
“He said that!” exclaimed Mother Wolf in alarm. “Black Wolf sent that message to me.”
“Yes,” replied Sneaky, smiling. “Now if you love Little Brother you will keep him away from the pack council. You’d better turn him loose and let him return to his own people.”
Mother Wolf was silent a moment. Then she raised her head, and said defiantly: “No, I’ll never do that. His own people would reject him. I’ve brought him up, and I’ll always be a mother to him unless he turns against me, and even then I shall continue to love him.”
She stopped before adding her final challenge. “And, listen, Sneaky, I shall take him before the pack council, and if Black Wolf orders the pack to pounce on him they’ll have to fight me first.”
Sneaky was so troubled by this that he had nothing to say. In the next story Washer shows the cubs a trick.
STORY SEVEN
WASHER LEARNS HE IS NOT A WOLF
Washer the Raccoon had been hunting with his Wolf brothers in the woods around their cave den. This was a part of their education. Mother Wolf would take them for a walk some distance from the cave, and teach them to pick up the scent of other animals on the wind. Sometimes it would be Browny the Muskrat or Sleepy the Opossum and again that of White Tail the Deer or Puma the Mountain Lion who had wandered away from their natural haunts.