Totally unconscious of all these happenings, Kiopo took his rest. The forest-folk might come and go as they pleased. Hour after hour he slept that heavy sleep of sheer exhaustion through which no messages pass from the outer world. The sun blazed down upon the sand-spit, drying his coat; and sleep, that marvellous medicine to which all the wild things turn, brought his strength slowly back to him in the waning afternoon.
CHAPTER XVIII
HOW KIOPO FOUGHT THE LYNX
When at length he opened his eyes, the sun had sunk below the hills. He rose slowly to his feet. He was so stiff that, when he stretched and shook himself, he gave a little yelp of pain. Then he sat down on his haunches and considered. On three sides of him stretched the lake; on the fourth, the forest, darkening in the evening gloom. Somewhere far out in the lake, a fish leaped with a splash. Kiopo turned his head uneasily towards the sound. It seemed to make the immense water more vast and lovely than before. He dreaded the lake now: it was a horror he would never forget. And because he sat there, still surrounded by the horror, and because the loneliness and longing that was in his heart for the little brother, swept over him all at once, he suddenly lifted his nose to the sky, and poured forth a wild, despairing howl, followed by another, and yet another.
Those desolate notes sent a message and a thrill far through the neighbourhood, till they died among the whispering reeds on the furthest shore. In the secret gloom of the forest, the startled creatures paused upon the trails. If Kiopo had wanted a good hunting, it was the worst mistake he could have made; for now every lesser animal within earshot would have warning of his presence, and know that a strange wolf was in a dangerous condition of unhappiness in the neighbourhood of the lake. Those who had intended feeding there, moved uneasily to safer pasture, and those who were hunters sought out more distant trails. So it happened that when, at last, Kiopo had finished his sorrow-making, and had entered the forest, he found it, to all appearances, emptied of its life.
He walked a little stiffly at first, but, by degrees, as his muscles worked, his body regained its suppleness, and very soon he was moving with the free swing which is particularly a wolf's.
The thought still uppermost in his mind was that of Dusty Star; but now he was utterly at a loss to know in which direction the Little Brother had gone. His long swim in those cold waters where he had so nearly met his death, seemed to have confused his wits. He roamed up and down, now along the lake shore, now back into the woods with a vague hope that somewhere or other he would come upon something that should set him on the trail. Yet although his nose worked incessantly, he smelt nothing but the darkness filled with vague scents of invisible things, and the old smell of the trees. As he wandered about, his forces came slowly back to him, and, with his strength, his anger. If he had now recovered the trail of those who had stolen the Little Brother from him, he would have followed it furiously to the death. The anger that was in him burned like a dull fire. It needed only a very small thing to fan it to a blaze.
Nosing the ground as he went, he came suddenly upon a plain scent. It was one which he detested. It roused old memories, and an old slumbering hate. The trail led on below the spruces, and was fresh enough to be easily followed. And now Kiopo's whole being seemed to change. He no longer slouched along with a sulky and dejected air. His body stiffened and became alive. He carried himself as if on compressed springs. His eyes glowed with a dangerous fire. As he went on, the scent freshened with the odour he detested. The hair between his shoulders rose like a threat.
By the side of a big hemlock, the trail bent sharply to the right, leading over some rocky ground at the foot of a small hill. Upon the granite boulders covered with grey and orange lichen, the reflected light from the sunset sky lingered in a warm glow, as if they themselves were luminous. Kiopo moved with the utmost caution. He hardly seemed to walk so much as to slide over the uneven surface, with his belly close to the ground. Instinct, as much as sense, told him that the object of his hatred was now extremely near. In another moment, his eyes saw what hitherto he had only gathered with his nose.