He wanted to go. All the part of him that was wolf cried out to go. Yet something held him back. If Carboona sent a voice from the West, so also the camp of his people called him in the East. The human in him, the deep, loving, human thing, which had been born with him, and which he could not understand, refused to let him go.
Yet Kiopo! How could he part with Kiopo—the one creature in the world which he fully understood? He felt that he would give all he possessed—his new-found honours, his wealth, his power over his tribe—if only Kiopo would return with him to the camp. Yet he knew it could not be. It would be asking Kiopo to come back to a life which, sooner or later, would prove his doom.
Yes; whether he himself went or stayed, he knew Kiopo must go. That wild heart, faithful as it was, could never more cabin itself in the cramped circle of an Indian camp. It, too, had heard Carboona's call. Carboona—the grim foster-mother had summoned it—and the wolf-heart obeyed.
In Dusty Star's own heart the fight was terrible. It seemed as if the Wolf and Human, in a final struggle for victory, were rending it apart. And yet, in spite of the Wolf within him, tearing him to pieces, the old mystery of of his race, true to its age-long, world-deep roots, held. He knew, at last, that Kiopo must return alone.
In the clear light of the rising sun, there might have been seen, drawn sharply against the morning sky on the ridge of Look-out-Bluff, the figures of an Indian and a wolf. Then the wolf's disappeared, and the human figure was left standing alone. But although, in the long clearness of the prairies, sound sometimes carries further than sight, no listening ears caught the despairing cry, "Kiopo! Kiopo!" which sobbed itself westward into a silence that gave no answering voice.
And now, as to all things, there comes an end, even to the endless-seeming journeys of the wandering cariboo, so also we have reached the the end of the history of Dusty Star.
Did he stay with his people always, you ask? Or did he one day disappear into Carboona to find Kiopo? Or did Kiopo, after long wanderings, return once more to seek the Little Brother along the eastern trail?
I cannot say. Only in the West, strange things may happen. But this I know. Of the final parting between the boy and the wolf there was no witness, beast or human. And exactly what took place then, no white man's tongue may tell.