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Thus it came about that to the black bull-calf the wilderness seemed almost empty of life, save for the birds, the insects, the squirrels, and the fish leaping in the pool. To all these the bell was a matter of indifference. Once only, late in the autumn, did he get a glimpse of the old Quah-Davic panther.
The dream that gave new zest to all his waking hours was the fashioning of a little farm in this sunny, sheltered space about his cabin. He had grown somewhat weary of living by trap and snare and gun, hunting down the wild creatures whom he had come to regard, through lapse of the long, solitary years by the Quah-Davic, as in some sense comrade and kin to him.
Thereupon, the panther had slunk off with a whipped look and a drooping tail; and the little black bull conceived a poor opinion of panthers. But it was the sudden tonk-tonking of the bell, not the challenge of his redoubtable mother, that had put the fierce-eyed prowler to flight. It was much the same with the bears, who were numerous about the Quah-Davic.
Though the pack he led numbered no more than half a dozen, he made it respected and dreaded through all the wild leagues of the Quah-Davic. To make things worse, this long-flanked, long-jawed marauder was no less cunning than fierce.
But their screeches and harsh caterwaulings often filled his heart with wonder. Fear he had as yet had no occasion to learn; and therefore he had little real part in the ever-watchful life of the wilderness. The next winter was a hard one for all the beasts of the Quah-Davic; and, ere it went by, the lair under the hemlocks was surrounded by many lynx tracks.
Again came autumn to the Quah-Davic, with the pale blue smoke of asters along the meadow-ledges, the pale gold glimmer of birches on the slopes, and the wax-vermilion bunches of the rowan-berries reflected in each brown pool.
With abundant pasturage on the Quah-Davic water-meadows, they had no occasion to wander into the perils of the deep wood; and the little red cow had none of that prevision of wild mothers, which leads them to instruct their young in the two great vital points of woodcraft, the procuring of food and the avoiding of enemies.
He had thriven, and grown to the strength and stature that were his rightful heritage. And "the Gray Master of the Quah-Davic," as Kane had dubbed him, was no loup-garou, no outcast human soul incarcerate in wolf form, but simply a great Alaskan timber-wolf. But this, when all is said, is quite enough.
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