But once fear entered into him, and he scurried back to his mother.

It was when one of the winged hunters of the air swooped down on a snowshoe rabbit, and the squealing agony of the doomed creature set his heart thumping like a little hammer.

He felt in those cries the nearness of that one ever-present tragedy of the wild--death.

He felt it again that night when, snuggled close to Gray Wolf, he listened to the fierce outcry of a wolf pack that was close on the heels of a young caribou bull.

And the meaning of it all, and the wild thrill of it all, came home to him early in the gray dawn when Kazan returned, holding between his jaws a huge rabbit that was still kicking and squirming with life.
This rabbit was the climax in the first chapter of Baree's education.
It was as if Gray Wolf and Kazan had planned it all out, so that he might receive his first instruction in the art of killing.