Where the Lone Wolf had come from, nobody could tell. One Fall, when the air was full of the honking of the geese, he had arrived mysteriously with the first cold, and seemed to bring the winter with him. And from that day, the soundless word went throughout Carboona's inmost recesses: "Beware of the Terror of the eastern thickets. Beware of the Lone Wolf." And those who were foolish enough to disregard the warning, escaped a hard winter by falling to prey to the wolf.
One morning, Lone Wolf slept later than was his habit. During his sleep he did not dream; yet warm scents, drifting in the shimmering tide of the heat, lapped against his nose in ripples so fine that they did not disturb his brain.
When at length he awoke, he yawned. The yawn was like a huge gash in his lower face. After the yawn, he rose, and shook himself. Then he sat down on his haunches and looked abroad into the world. He had slept well, and was not aware of being hungry; so there was no need to bother himself about hunting. For all that, he was not contented. He wanted something, but he didn't know what. He felt he might find it, if he went for a walk. So he walked. When he came to the angle of a certain stone, he stopped dead, sniffed, set his hair bristling between his shoulders, and growled in the very black places of his throat.
He had found a rival's mark!
The sudden change in Lone Wolf was remarkable. From being an apparently lazy hump of dark grey wolfishness with an air of nothing to do, he turned into an alert, cunning Ferocity whose every nerve and faculty were tightened up for the performance of something very particular indeed. As he moved over the sun-scorched surface of the rocky ground, his body carried low on the great springs of his legs, he seemed to gather all the ancient floating evil of the locality to himself and give it a wolf's shape.
If the Carboona peoples had known that the Terror was once more upon the prowl, a thrill of fear would have shot along the mountain, like an electric current. But at this drowsy hour of the day, most of them were resting from their hunting of the previous night and early morning, and were sleeping in their lairs. Boola and her family were curled up in the cool chamber at the end of the hole. Baltook was taking a light nap in a shady spot he knew of among a cluster of shumacks a quarter of a mile from the den. Goshmeelee sat in huge contentment in the edges of the swamp—sitting up commodiously on the well-cushioned and very wide sitting-down part of her, and rocking herself slowly to and fro with a pleasant sense of the damp and slimy cosiness to be had in the swampy parts of the world. While the squirrels, chipmunks, and blue jays, and all other small watchers and warners of danger coming, or to come, perched on shady look-out points, and blinked their eyes a little in the drowsy warmth.
As soon as Lone Wolf left the open mountain side and entered the out-lying edges of the spruce woods, he was fully aware that he was being watched by many pairs of eyes. And he had not gone very far before he had annoying proof of this in the defiant chatter of a chipmunk which was taking noon-tide observation on a hollow log. Above all things, Lone Wolf wanted to go secretly. As he passed the log, he shot a murderous look at its occupier out of his cruel grey-green eyes; but he knew better than to waste his energy by making a leap at that alert bundle of fur-covered springs, and so went softly on his way, while the chipmunk sent its angry warning out to all forest-folks within earshot that murder was on the trail.
He had reached a spot about a mile from the camp when he came to an abrupt stand. There not fifty paces away, he saw a big wolf, with another creature beside it which was certainly not a wolf. Both were travelling quickly eastward. He remained motionless till they had disappeared and then took up the fresh trail. Its mingled beast and human smell disturbed him. He had met Red men before, and detested them. He still carried the mark and the memory of an Indian tomahawk which had slashed him in the neck, when, running one hard winter with a desperately hungry pack, he had attacked a solitary Indian travelling across the frost-bound levels of the lakes. Now, as the mixed smell of the wolf-breed, and hated man-breed, rose to his nostrils, the old enmity slumbering within him leaped again to life.
For the rest of that day, he dogged the footsteps of the pair; and when they separated at twilight, Kiopo going to hunt, and Dusty Star returning to camp, it was the boy he followed, not the wolf. And little did Dusty Star suspect, as he went alone through the darkening woods, that every step of his homeward way was shadowed by the Terror of the Carboona on delicately-stepping feet.
Over and over again the wolf wanted to leap upon the boy and destroy him then and there, yet the vague fear of the human being, which disturbs wild animals, haunted his nerves, and he could not throw it off before Dusty Star reached the camp.