Shasta, stealing through the spruces as noiselessly as any of the wild brotherhood, thought he had done an extremely clever thing. He fully believed he had caught an old black bear unawares, sitting up on the trail and sniffing at nothing, with his paws dangling foolishly before him. It was not until the boy was close upon him that Gomposh quickly turned his head, and pretended to be surprised. Shasta, recognizing his old friend, came slowly forward with shining eyes.
At first Gomposh did not speak, but that was not surprising. Gomposh was not one to rush into speech when you could express so much by saying nothing. To be able to express a good deal, and yet not to put it into the shape of words—to say things with your whole body and mind without making noises with your mouth and throat—is a wonderful faculty. Few people know anything about it; because half the business of people's lives is carried on in the mouth, and they are not happy or wise enough to be quiet; but the beasts use it continually; because they are very happy and very wise.
So Gomposh looked at Shasta, and Shasta looked at Gomposh, and for a long time neither of them made a sound. But the mind that was in Gomposh's big body, and the body that was outside Gomposh's big mind, went on quietly making all sorts of observations which Shasta easily understood. So he knew, just as well as if Gomposh had said it, that the bear was telling him he had been on his travels; also that things were different in him; that he was another sort of person, because many things had happened to him in the meantime. Exactly what those things were, Gomposh did not know; but he knew what the effect was which they had produced in Shasta. He knew that the part of Shasta that was not wolf had mingled with that part of the world which also is not wolf, and that therefore he was a little less wolfish than before.
At first Shasta felt a little uncomfortable at the way Gomposh looked him calmly through and through. It was as if Gomposh said: "We are a long way off, little Brother. We have travelled far apart. But I catch you with the mind."
And Shasta couldn't help feeling as if he had done something of which he was ashamed. He had left the wild kindred—the wolf-father, the wolf-mother, all that swift, stealthy, fierce wolf-world that had its going among the trees. He had gone out to search for another kindred, almost as swift, stealthy and fierce as the wolves themselves, yet of a strange, unnamable cunning, and of a smell stranger still. And yet with all this strangeness, the new kindred had fastened itself upon him with a hold which Shasta could not shake off, as of something which his half-wolf nature could neither resist nor deny. And the more Gomposh looked at him out of his little piercing eyes, the more keenly he felt that the old bear was realizing this hold upon him of the new kindred, far off beyond the trees.
When at last Gomposh spoke—that is, when he allowed the wisdom that was in him to ooze out in bear language—what he remarked amounted to this:
"You have found the new kindred. You have learnt the new knowledge. You are less wolf than you were."
Shasta did not like being told that he had grown less a wolf. It was just as if Gomposh had accused him of having lost something which was not to be recovered.
"I am just the same as I was," he replied stoutly; but he knew it was not true.
"The moons have gone by, and the moons have gone by," Gomposh said. "The runways have been filled with folk. But you have not come along them. You have not watched them. You have missed everything that has gone by."