After Shasta's exploit against Kennebec, he became doubly marked as a person among the forest folk. Along the Wild news flies quickly. It is carried not only by swift feet and keen noses: it seems to travel as well by mysterious carriers, who spread it through the length and breadth of the land. What these carriers are, and what is the manner and meaning of their coming and going, only the wild creatures know. They see them with their large eyes which deepen with the dusk! They hear the soft whisper of their going on the wind-trails of the air! We should not see them, you or I, because our eyes are too accustomed to the artificial lights, and because around our minds are built the brick walls of the world. But the wild creatures, whose eyes have never been dulled by electricity, nor their ears stunned by the roar of the motors, see and hear the spirit faces and the flowing shapes which go by under the trees.  
So not many hours had passed before the great news of Shasta's coming had spread through the wilderness. And particularly the wolves took hold of it, and regarded Shasta as a sort of little god. No one had ever dared to dispute Kennebec's mastery before. Kennebec was so high and mighty that whatever he did must be suffered, even though you raged against it in your heart. But now the strange cub had done the unthinkable deed. He had done it and escaped. All those who had lost their young through Kennebec's evil claws rejoiced that now at last the tyrant was punished, and felt their wrongs avenged. Never more would Kennebec feel safe upon his precipice that climbed up to the stars. Feet and hands that had scaled it before might do so again. The fear of it would haunt him through the burning days and the breathless nights.
 
Yet, in spite of Shasta's growing importance among his wild kindred, a strange restlessness began to stir within him, and to move along his blood. And when the mood was strongest, his thoughts turned continually towards the place of the rocks where he had joined the wolf chorus and sung himself into the heart of the pack. It was the memory of the music which haunted him most, and when, from afar off, he would hear some wild wolf-note come sobbing through the night, the sound would set him thrilling till every hair on his body seemed to be alive. Yet always, following hard upon the remembrance of the chorus, would come that other memory of tall wolfish shapes, that moved on their hind legs, and of that red glow in the circle of things that did not move: all of it down there, at the foot of the precipice, as if one looked down through the canyon of sleep to the low lair of a dream.
 
One day when the thing was strong upon him, he met Gomposh, and asked him what it was. Gomposh said little, but thought much. He knew that at certain seasons all things follow a craving within them, and that it made them follow far trails, leading to distant ranges from which they did not always return. The geese went north, honking their mysterious cry. The caribou made long journeys, and deepened the ancient trails. The mountain sheep left their high pastures, guided by an instinct, which never failed, to the salt-lick in the lowlands to the south. And now it was plain to Gomposh that the strange cub had a craving within him also. It was not to find a lair in the north, nor a salt-lick in the south. It was not to change pasture for pasture, in the way of the caribou. Gomposh knew certainly that it was none of those things; but that it was the call of the blood that was in him, the secret Indian call, that penetrated even through the deep forests, far into the inmost heart of the wilderness where he lay outcast from his kind. But though Gomposh thought the thing clearly enough in his deep mind, he did not worry it into actual words.
 
"It is a good restlessness," he said. "It is of the other part of you that is not wolf. Follow the restlessness of your blood."
 
That, in the sense of it, was what Gomposh gave Shasta to understand, though he said it in his own peculiar way.
 
After that Shasta's mind was very busy with the new thing that had come to him, and before long he let it have its way, and started on his journey by himself. The wolves watched him go, but did not attempt to stop him. The growing unrest that had been in him had not escaped them. For, apart from the feeling which it produced, Shasta's outward behaviour was different from before. He came and went continually, restless and ill at ease. The very air about the cave seemed to breathe unrest, and the wolves themselves became restless, though they could not tell the reason why. Yet, although they did nothing to hinder him in his final departing, Nitka's eyes watched him regretfully as his little body disappeared among the trees.
 
He travelled on without stopping until he reached the spot where the great chorus had taken place. As he approached the neighbourhood, he grew more and more exc............