And then they would flash back at him again out of the darkness with such startling suddenness that Baree would involuntarily shrink closer to his mother, who always trembled and shivered in a strange sort of way when Kazan came in.
Baree, of course, would never know their story.

He would never know that Gray Wolf, his mother, was a full-blooded wolf, and that Kazan, his father, was a dog.

In him nature was already beginning its wonderful work, but it would never go beyond certain limitations.

It would tell him, in time, that his beautiful wolf mother was blind, but he would never know of that terrible battle between Gray Wolf and the lynx in which his mother's sight had been destroyed.

Nature could tell him nothing of Kazan's merciless vengeance, of the wonderful years of their matehood, of their loyalty, their strange adventures in the great Canadian wilderness--it could make him only a son of Kazan.
But at first, and for many days, it was all mother.