The days and weeks went by. By the time the dark blue flower of the camass had faded, and the yellow wild parsley had begun to look tired, Shasta began to feel again the same strange restlessness creeping over him which he had felt before. And whenever he turned his face towards the southeast, the remembrance of the Indian village would sit down thickly upon him, and he would stop to think. When he remembered the raw-hide lariat and the husky dogs, he hated the camp; but when he remembered with his nose-memory, the pleasant odour of the burning cottonwood and of the dried sweet-grass came to him and made a stirring in his heart. Moreover, the Indian smell was there—the smell that does not come from cottonwood nor sweet-grass, or parfleches filled with buffalo meat, but clings about even the Indian names and is an odour of the old, forgotten times.  
And as he went along the trails, somehow or other everything was different. The birds were there just the same. The blue jays were full of jabbering talk. The crows followed each other from tree to tree, always crying to those ahead to go farther on, and fasten their food-bags to another bough. And the woodpecker hammered hollowly at the hidden heart of the woods. As with the birds, so with the beasts. Nitka and Shoomoo went and came on the hunting trails, and the wolf-brothers howled in the night. Gomposh slapped the dead logs for grubs, and was a silly old bear when nobody was watching. But when he met any one he would sit down heavily at once and look dreadfully wise. And the weasels went on their wicked ways, killing and killing, not because of hunger, but the blood-lust to kill. And the red squirrels and the grey squirrels ran along the tree-tops for miles, without ever coming to ground; and the fussy little chipmunks fussed.
 
Yet in spite of all this, Shasta felt that something had changed, and that nothing could ever be quite the same again. And although the wolves brought him just as much meat as before, so that he never went hungry, he kept longing for the taste of the buffalo tongue which the Indian woman had thrown to him out of the smoking pot. The wolves never brought him anything so good as that. It made his mouth water whenever he thought of that delicious thing.
 
So he wandered up and down, up and down, more and more restless, and difficult to satisfy. It was not that he was unhappy. Sometimes, even, he was wildly happy, running and leaping in the sun, or swinging on a fir branch, and talking wolf-talk to himself. At such times the sunlight and the sweet mountain air seemed to have got into his blood, and the blue sky did not seem blue enough or the moss green enough, or the Bargloosh big enough, to be equal to his joy. It was the life that was in him which could not contain itself in his body, and kept overflowing the high brim of his heart!
 
Yet the creatures and their ways did not wholly satisfy him. That was the mischief of it. There were other creatures and other ways. He had seen those other creatures and he could not forget. He did not know that they were his own people, and that the drawing which he felt towards them was blood, and not cooked buffalo tongue. When his thoughts ran that way, it was the remembrance of the smell and the taste of the new life that was strongest. Even the memory of the lariat and the huskies could not overcome that. And as Meeko, the red squirrel, was always running along the green roof of the world, chickering and making mischief, and egging folks on to fight, so along the roof of Shasta's mind the new restlessness ran, and chickered, and would not let him be.
 
The morning came at last when he bowed his head and obeyed. He stood a long time at the mouth of the cave, looking over the familiar world of forest and mountain, and the distant shining peaks. Far away to the south he saw a speck against the blue. It moved slowly as he watched. Something told him that it was Kennebec, sitting in the wind. Kennebec had been very quiet of late. Now that there were no eaglets to feed, there was not so much need to go cub and lamb snatching on the mountain slopes. Besides which, he avoided the Bargloosh. It was there that the creature lived who had dared to scale his rocks. Henceforth the Bargloosh became for Kennebec a place of danger, and he gave it a wide berth.
 
Now, as Shasta gazed over the wide spaces below him, and up at the rocks above, he looked at them wistfully, as if he were saying good-bye. He didn't know anything about good-bye really, because the animals never consciously say farewell. They separate from each other because their feet take them, but it is mercifully hidden from them that sometimes they will not return. Something in him begged him to stay: to remain where he was and not mix himself up with the new, unexplained life that was busy among the foothills where there were lariats and husky dogs, and where the creatures walked on their hind legs. Here he knew the world and the ways of all its folk. From the shadowy inside of the cave to the glare of the sunlight on the shimmering peaks, he was familiar with it all; it was built about his heart in a bigness that was home. But now, for some unexplained and mysterious reason he was leaving it and going to this other utterly different thing which had bound him and bitten him and had given new smells to his nose and a new taste to his tongue. And he knew perfectly well that neither Nitka nor Shoomoo, nor any of the wolf-brothers would wish him to go; just as clearly as if they all sat on their haunches in a row in front of him and implored him to remain. They were all away now, and he was alone at the den's mouth. But if they should come back before he started, he knew that he could not keep the thing a secret from their sharp understandings. They would lick him, and rub noses, and look at him out of their wild wonderful eyes, and say, "We know, Little Person!" and then the thing would be impossible, and he would not be able to go.
 
In a moment he had run swiftly down the slope and was lost among the trees.
 
The sun was setting when he reached the end of the canyon towards the Indian camp. He did not go by way of the wolf-rocks this time. It was there that Looking-All-Ways had seized him, and he did not want to be caught like that again. So he had climbed down the steep sides of the gorge which the Indians call Big Wolf Canyon, and crept out among the high clumps of bunch-grass beside the stream. He could not see the village from here. It was hidden by a swell of the ground; but though he could not see it, he caught the sounds and the smells of it as they drifted down-wind. Presently he plucked up his courage and climbed to the top of the rising ground. Here the village was full in view. Soft blue trails of smoke were rising from the tops of the lodges, for the squaws were preparing the evening meal. The camp looked very peaceful, and not at all a thing to fill you with dread. Nevertheless, Shasta eyed it suspiciously, as a thing full of unexpected dangers which yelped and had sharp teeth.
 
Slowly he crept forward, crawling from tuft to tuft of grass, and taking advantage of every bit of rising ground, so that he might approach as close as possible without being seen. The things he was particularly on his guard against were the huskies; but as luck would have it there was not a single dog on this side of the camp, so that he crept right up to the outer circle of lodges without any mishap. It was not till he had reached the inner circle of lodges and was crouching at the back of one of them that he was discovered.
 
The one who made the discovery was no less a person than Running-Laughing, the ten-year-old daughter of the chief. She was carrying a buffalo bag to fetch water from the stream, and passed so close behind the tepee that she almost trod on Shasta before she saw him. She stood still in amazement, looking down at the strange thing at her feet. Shasta gazed at her in equal astonishment, but also with fear. By reason of his position on the ground Running-Laughing looked taller to him than she really was. He marvelled at her appearance, and the things she seemed to have stuck on to her skin. It is true she only wore a soft-tanned buckskin dress, trimmed with porcupine quills and deer-bones, an............