Kiopo left the marks of his teeth upon everything that he could bite. When Dusty Star's mother, Nikana, found them upon one of her best bead moccasins, so that many of the beads were missing, she gave him a tap with the moccasin that made him yelp with pain. But when Blue Wings, Dusty Star's baby sister, was, one fine day, found lying carelessly about on the floor of the tepee, to Kiopo's intense delight, and began to be treated like the beads, Nikana, roused by her screaming, gave Kiopo such a shaking, and such a cuffing between the shakes, that he really thought his last hour had come, and yelled as piercingly as Blue Wings herself. Not that he wanted to hurt things for the sake of hurting. He merely wanted to worry them, and to bite and bite, and bite.
It was all very strange after the old life in the Carboona, where the blue jays made such loud remarks to each other from thicket to thicket, and whoever hadn't got wings, went upon four feet. But here the tall, human creatures went always upon two only, and it was only the little Dusty Star that understood stomach-walking on all fours, and making companionable noises in the throat. As for Blue Wings—the cub that yelled when you bit her—she was a poor imitation of a human, though possibly with a high food value, if only they would let you try.
One of the hardest things to get used to was the tepee itself, with its peculiar Indian smells, so utterly different to the badger-hole where the only scent was the good home smell of the family, or perhaps of some fine old bone that had had many teeth at work upon it, and was trying hard to be dead. It was some time before Kiopo grew accustomed to the new smells, so as to be able to sort them out as belonging to the various objects which gave them. And when night had fallen, it was a dismal experience to wake up and see the inside of the tepee full of unfamiliar shapes in the glimmer of the moon. And then a great fear would take him, and he would lift the thin pipe of his cub voice and yelp aloud, because he wanted his mother, and because there lay at the back of his head a dim idea that there were ears upon Carboona that would catch the sound, and send a gaunt hairy body loping to the rescue. But the listeners upon Carboona were too remote to catch that wailing cry, and those that were close at hand were not disposed to be sympathetic. When Running Wolf shouted at him, he was all the more terrified, and yelped the louder, and when the angry Indian seized him and shook him into silence, his little heart was fit to break.
Under cover of the darkness, Dusty Star stole across to where the wolf-cub lay cowering, and gathered the little shivering body into his arms. And then he made him a lair in the buffalo robe that covered his own bed. And when Kiopo felt the warmth and good neighbourhood of the human brother's body, he cuddled himself against it with a sigh and whimpered himself to sleep.
In the day-time it was not so lonely because there were many things to sniff at and to watch. Besides there was always the big brother ready to play with him, and to come down on all fours from the great heights of the hind-leg-walking world, or to tickle him in the ribs when he rolled over on his back and exposed the round bulge that was his stomach to the public. It was wonderful how much Kiopo managed to cram into that bulge, and how his body grew in proportion to the bulge. His appetite never seemed to be satisfied. Bits of buffalo meat, old bones, odds and ends of waste, shreds of pemmican, or gollops of stew—the bulge took them all and still had room for more.
By the end of the second moon after his arrival, he was already far advanced in cub-hood, and showed signs of extraordinary development when he should be fully grown. And always he was learning new things. With Dusty Star for his constant companion and teacher he was learning very fast. And what he learnt, he never forgot, so that his knowledge was of the utmost service to him afterwards when the time came to fight his own battles far out along the world. His love and reverence for the little man-brother were unbounded. What the man-brother said and did were for him the great, important, splendid things. In a surprisingly short time, he had forgotten to think about his wolf-kindred, far away upon Carboona. Yet though he did not know it, the wisdom of his wolf-ancestors lay deep down within him in the secret lair of memory where the wild things never forget.
He was immensely curious about the outer world. There was the willow-copse by the stream where the brown water talked with a wet tongue. It was crossed by tiny trails of wood and water folk that had furtive scurrying movements and were very hard to catch. Kiopo's small wolf-eyes had the keenest possible sight, and what his eyes did not tell him about the little furtive folk, he found out by experiments with his paws, mouth and nose. Sometimes his curiosity got him into trouble, as upon the day when, pouncing upon an immense green grasshopper close to the water's edge, he lost his balance, and rolled head-over-heels into the stream. Fortunately the water was shallow, but the scrambling and spluttering and yelping were so tremendous that the commotion brought the big brother racing to the rescue. After that experience Kiopo learnt the lesson that however tempting game may be, it is best to look beyond it before you make your spring.
It was not long before he became a mighty hunter of mice. Between the grass bents and the stalks of the prairie plants, their runways ran like little roads down which they scurried in the early morning or late afternoon, doing a hundred miles of mouse geography to their watering-places at the stream. No cunning wolf-mother taught Kiopo to nose these narrow water-trails, and lie down beside them very craftily, with his head between his paws. Yet the ancient hunting-craft of wolf ancestors who had made their kills years beyond memory in the grey backwards of the moons, woke in his blood when the time arrived and showed him what to do. And Dusty Star, observing how, after countless failures, his cub gained mastery over the mice, admired his tireless perseverance, and loved the little hunter with all his Indian heart.