There was no wind in the treetops, and it seemed to Baree that the howl he had given must have echoed to the end of the world.
Now and then Baree heard a sound--and always he stopped, attentive and listening.

Far away he heard the long, soft mooing of a cow moose.

He heard a great splashing in the water of a small lake that he came to, and once there came to him the sharp cracking of horn against horn--two bucks settling a little difference of opinion a quarter of a mile away.
But it was always the wolf howl that made him sit and listen longest, his heart beating with a strange impulse which he did not as yet understand.

It was the call of his breed, growing in him slowly but insistently.
He was still a wanderer--pupamootao, the Indians call it.

It is this "wander spirit" that inspires for a time nearly every creature of the wild as soon as it is able to care for itself--nature's scheme, perhaps, for doing away with too close family relations and possibly dangerous interbreeding.