Sekoosew was prepared for what happened then.  It always happened when he attacked Napanao, the wood partridge.  Her wings were powerful, and her first instinct when he struck was always that of flight.  She rose straight up now with a great thunder of wings.  Sekoosew hung tight, his teeth buried deep in her throat, and his tiny, sharp claws clinging to her like hands.  Through the air he whizzed with her, biting deeper and deeper, until a hundred yards from where that terrible death thing had fastened to her throat, Napanao crashed again to earth.

Where she fell was not ten feet from Baree.  For a few moments he looked at the struggling mass of feathers in a daze, not quite comprehending that at last food was almost within his reach.  Napanao was dying, but she still struggled convulsively with her wings.  Baree rose stealthily, and after a moment in which he gathered all his remaining strength, he made a rush for her.  His teeth sank into her breast—­and not until then did he see Sekoosew.  The ermine had raised his head from the death grip at the partridge’s throat, and his savage little red eyes glared for a single instant into Baree’s.  Here was something too big to kill, and with an angry squeak the ermine was gone.  Napanao’s wings relaxed, and the throb went out of her body.  She was dead.  Baree hung on until he was sure.  Then he began his feast.

With murder in his heart, Sekoosew hovered near, whisking here and there but never coming nearer than half a dozen feet from Baree.  His eyes were redder than ever.  Now and then he emitted a sharp little squeak of rage.  Never had he been so angry in all his life!  To have a fat partridge stolen from him like this was an imposition he had never suffered before.  He wanted to dart in and fasten his teeth in Baree’s jugular.  But he was too good a general to make the attempt, too good a Napoleon to jump deliberately to his Waterloo.  An owl he would have fought.  He might even have given battle to his big brother—­and his deadliest enemy—­the mink.  But in Baree he recognized the wolf breed, and he vented his spite at a distance.  After a time his good sense returned, and he went off on another hunt.

Baree ate a third of the partridge, and the remaining two thirds he cached very carefully at the foot of the big spruce.  Then he hurried down to the creek for a drink.  The world looked very different to him now.  After all, one’s capacity for happiness depends largely on how deeply one has suffered.  One’s hard luck and misfortune form the measuring stick for future good luck and fortune.  So it was with Baree.  Forty-eight hours ago a full stomach would not have made him a tenth part as happy as he was now.  Then his greatest longing was for his mother.  Since then a still greater yearning had come into his life—­for food.  In a way it was fortunate for him that he had almost died of exhaustion and starvation, for his experience had helped to make a man of him—­or a wolf dog, just as you are of a mind to put it.  He would miss his mother for a long time.  But he would never miss her again as he had missed her yesterday and the day before.