In the snow darkness, and snow silence, Dusty Star listened to the muffled roar of a giant wind that wrenched the forest till it seemed as if not a tree would be left to stand. And he wondered How Baltook and Boola did, and wished he could have persuaded Goshmeelee to take up her winter quarters with them in the snowed-up tepee. But Goshmeelee was extremely occupied—that is, she was extremely busy with being fast asleep, and she wasn't going to wake up for anybody till it was time to be Spring.
And so the winter passed, and Dusty Star followed Kiopo's example in learning to be lean. Very lean and scraggy they both were when the snow melted and the geese took a thought to go North. But the scragginess did not injure their health, and as the grass grew, and the hunting improved, the meat began to come once more upon their bones.
And so the moon of roses came once more, followed by the Thunder Moon, and the Moon-when-the-leaves-turn-yellow; and there was not a sign of a Yellow Dog, or of any other enemy to trouble their peace. And Winter came again; as before. And when the spring came for the second time, it seemed almost as if Carboona had always been their home. And nothing seemed to change except that Baltook and Boola got a new litter of cubs each year, and that after Goshmeelee had licked one or two babies into cleanliness one season, it was the same tongue, but a new Baby, the next! As for Mr. Goshmeelee, he was so very shy and retiring that it was only once in a blue moon that you ever saw him at all. And as Goshmeelee didn't bother to mention him, Dusty Star didn't like to press her with questions, and pretended he wasn't there.
But the one real change was just the one about which Dusty Star knew the least and did not fuss himself about at all. For the winter and the summer, and the heat and the cold, and the meat coming on his bones, and going off again, and the great life he lived with Kiopo beyond Human ken, were slowly but surely working upon him.
He was growing up!
CHAPTER XX
THE TERROR OF THE CARBOONA
In the inmost heart of the Carboona, among a wilderness of boulders, old pine stumps, and dense thickets of juniper and thorn there was a spot to which all wise Carboona dwellers gave a wide berth. Apart from its bareness and lack of pasture, the place bore an ill name. Its evil reputation came from very ancient times. It was shunned equally by catamount, fox, bear, wolf and moose. And the lesser creatures, which haunted the neighbouring thickets, kept well within their shelter and rarely ventured out. Even the Cariboo, with the travelling restlessness strong within them, turned aside after much uneasy pawing of the ground, and suspicious blasts of breath, and fetched a semi-circle to the north or south. Yet not one of these suspicious folk could have given any plain reason for their avoidance of the spot. It was enough for them that the wisdom of the ages informed them it was bad.
But now, in addition to the vague influence of the place, its evil reputation had been strengthened by an added terror which was by no means vague: it was known as the lair of a new resident—the Great Lone Wolf.