CHAPTER IX
Impelled by the wild alarm of the Willow’s terrible cries and the sight of Pierrot dashing madly toward him from the dead body of Wakayoo, Baree did not stop running until it seemed as though his lungs could not draw another breath. When he stopped, he was well out of the cañon and headed for the beaver-pond. For almost a week Baree had not been near the pond. He had not forgotten Beaver-tooth and Umisk and the other little beavers, but Wakayoo and his daily catch of fresh fish had been too big a temptation for him. Now Wakayoo was gone. He sensed the fact that the big black bear would never fish again in the quiet pools and shimmering eddies, and that where for many days there had been peace and plenty, there was now great danger; and just as in another country he would have fled for safety to the old windfall, he now fled desperately for the beaver-pond.
Exactly wherein lay Baree’s fears it would be difficult to say—but surely it was not because of Nepeese. The Willow had chased him hard. She had flung herself upon him. He had felt the clutch of her hands and the smother of her soft hair, and yet of her he was not afraid! If he stopped now and then in his flight and looked back, it was to see if Nepeese was following. He would not have run hard from her—alone. Her eyes and voice and hands had set something stirring in him; he was filled with a greater yearning and a greater loneliness now—and that night he dreamed troubled dreams.
He found himself a bed under a spruce root not far from the beaver-pond, and all through the night his sleep was filled with that restless dreaming—dreams of his mother, of Kazan, the old windfall, of Umisk—and of Nepeese. Once, when he awoke, he thought the spruce root was Gray Wolf; and when he found that she was not there, Pierrot and the Willow could have told what his crying meant if they had heard it. Again and again he had visions of the thrilling happenings of that day. He saw the flight of Wakayoo over the little meadow—he saw him die again. He saw the glow of the Willow’s eyes close to his own, heard her voice—so sweet and low that it was like strange music to him—and again he heard her terrible screams.
Baree was glad when the dawn came. He did not seek for food, but went down to the pond. There was little hope and anticipation in his manner now. He remembered that, as plainly as animal ways could talk, Umisk and his playmates had told him they wanted nothing to do with him. And yet the fact that they were there took away some of his loneliness. It was more than loneliness. The wolf in him was submerged. The dog was master. And in these passing moments, when the blood of the wild was almost dormant in him, he was depressed by the instinctive and growing feeling that he was not of that wild, but a fugitive in it, menaced on all sides by strange dangers.
Deep in the northern forests the beaver does not work and play in darkness only, but uses day even more than night, and many of Beaver-tooth’s people were awake when Baree began disconsolately to investigate the shores of the pond. The little beavers were still with their mothers in the big houses that looked like great domes of sticks and mud out in the middle of the lake. There were three of these houses, one of them at least twenty feet in diameter. Baree had some difficulty in following his side of the pond. When he got back among the willows and alders and birch, dozens of little canals crossed and criss-crossed in his path. Some of these canals were a foot wide, and others three or four feet, and all were filled with water. No country in the world ever had a better system of traffic than this domain of the beavers, down which they brought their working materials and food into the main reservoir—the pond.
In one of the larger canals Baree surprised a big beaver towing a four-foot cutting of birch as thick through as a man’s leg—half a dozen breakfasts and dinners and suppers in that one cargo. The four or five inner barks of the birch are what might be called the bread and butter and potatoes of the beaver menu, while the more highly prized barks of the willow and young alder take the place of meat and pie.
Baree smelled curiously of the birch cutting after the old beaver had abandoned it in flight, and then went on. He did not try to hide himself now, and at least half a dozen beavers had a good look at him before he came to the point where the pond narrowed down to the width of the stream, almost half a mile from the dam. Then he wandered back. All that morning he hovered about the pond, showing himself openly.
In their big mud-and-stick strongholds the beavers held a council of war. They were distinctly puzzled. There were four enemies which they dreaded above all others: the otter, who destroyed their dams in the winter-time and brought death to them from cold and by lowering the water so they could not get to their food-supplies; the lynx, who preyed on them all, young and old alike; and the fox and wolf, who would lie in ambush for hours in order to pounce on the very young, like Umisk and his playmates. If Baree had been any one of these four, wily Beaver-tooth and his people would have known what to do. But Baree was surely not an otter, and if he was a fox or a wolf or a lynx, his actions were very strange, to say the least. Half a dozen times he had had the opportunity to pounce on his prey, if he had been seeking prey. But at no time had he shown the desire to harm them.
It may be that the beavers discussed the matter fully among themselves. It is possible that Umisk and his playmates told their parents of their adventure, and of how Baree made no move to harm them when he could quite easily have caught them. It is also more than likely that the older beavers who had fled from Baree that morning gave an account of their adventures, again emphasizing the fact that the stranger, while frightening them, had shown no disposition to attack them. All this is quite possible, for if beavers can make a large part of a continent’s history, and can perform engineering feats that nothing less than dynamite can destroy, it is only reasonable to suppose that they have some way of making one another understand.
However this may be, courageous old Beaver-tooth took it upon himself to end the suspense.
It was early in the afternoon that for the third or fourth time Baree walked out on the dam. This dam was fully two hundred feet in length, but at no point did the water run over it, the overflow finding its way through narrow sluices. A week or two ago Baree could have crossed to the opposite side of the pond on this dam, but now—at the far end—Beaver-tooth and his engineers were adding a new section of dam, and in order to accomplish their work more easily, they had flooded fully fifty yards of the low ground on which they were working. The main dam held a fascination for Baree. It was strong with the smell of beaver. The top of it was high and dry, and there were dozens of smoothly worn little hollows in which the beavers had taken their sun-baths. In one of these hollows Baree stretched himself out, with his eyes on the pond. Not a ripple stirred its velvety smoothness. Not a sound broke the drowsy stillness of the afternoon. The beavers might have been dead or asleep, for all the stir they made. And yet they knew that Baree was on the dam. Where he lay, the sun fell in a warm flood, and it was so comfortable that after a time he had difficulty in keeping his eyes open to watch the pond. Then he fell asleep.
Just how Beaver-tooth sensed this fact is a mystery. Five minutes later he came up quietly, without a splash or a sound, within fifty yards of Baree. For a few moments he scarcely moved in the water. Then he swam very slowly parallel with the dam across the pond. At the other side he drew himself ashore, and for another minute sat as motionless as a stone, with his eyes on that part of the dam where Baree was lying. Not another beaver was moving, and it was very soon apparent that Beaver-tooth had but one object in mind—getting a closer observation of Baree. When he entered the water again, he swam along close to the dam. Ten feet beyond Baree he began to climb out. He did this with great slowness and caution. At last he reached the top of the dam.
A few yards away Baree was almost hidden in his hollow, only the top of his shiny black body appearing to Beaver-tooth’s scrutiny. To get a better look, the old beaver spread his flat tail out beyond him and rose to a sitting posture on his hind-quarters, his two front paws held squirrel-like over his breast. In this pose he was fully three feet tall. He probably weighed forty pounds, and in some ways he resembled one of those fat, good-natured, silly-looking dogs that go largely to stomach. But his brain was working with amazing celerity. Suddenly he gave the hard mud of the dam a single slap with his tail—and Baree sat up. Instantly he saw Beaver-tooth, and stared. Beaver-tooth stared. For a full half-minute neither moved the thousandth part of an inch. Then Baree stood up and wagged his tail.
That was enough. Dropping to his forefeet. Beaver-tooth waddled leisurely to the edge of the dam and dived over. He was neither cautious nor in very great haste now. He made a great commotion in the water and swam boldly back and forth under Baree. When he had done this several times, he cut straight up the pond to the largest of the three houses and disappeared. Five minutes after Beaver-tooth’s exploit word was passing quickly among the colony. The stranger—Baree—was not a lynx. He was not a fox. He was not a wolf. Moreover, he was very young—and harmless. Work could be resumed. Play could be resumed. There was no danger. Such was Beaver-tooth’s verdict.
If some one had shouted these facts in beaver-language through a megaphone, the response could not have been quicker. All at once it seemed to Baree, who was still standing on the edge of the dam, that the pond was alive with beavers. He had never seen so many at one time before. They were popping up everywhere, and some of them swam up within a dozen feet of him and looked him over in a leisurely and curious way. For perhaps five minutes the beavers seemed to have no particular object in view. Then Beaver-tooth himself struck straight for the shore and climbed out. Others followed him. Half a dozen workers disappeared in the canals. As many more waddled out among the alders and willows. Eagerly Baree watched for Umisk and his chums. At last he saw them, swimming forth from one of the smaller houses. They climbed out on their playground—the smooth bar above the shore of mud. Baree wagged his tail so hard that his whole body shook, and hurried along the dam.
When he came out on the level strip of shore, Umisk was there alone, nibbling his supper from a long, freshly cut willow. The other little beavers had gone into a thick clump of young alders.
This time Umisk did not run. He looked up from his stick. Baree squatted himself, wiggling in a most friendly and ingratiating manner. For a few seconds Umisk regarded him.
Then, very coolly, he resumed his supper.
CHAPTER X
Just as in the life of every man there is one big, controlling influence, either for good or bad, so in the life of Baree the beaver-pond was largely an arbiter of destiny. Where he might have gone if he had not discovered it, and what might have happened to him, are matters of conjecture. But it held him. It began to take the place of the old windfall, and in the beavers themselves he found a companionship which made up, in a way, for his loss of the protection and friendship of Kazan and Gray Wolf.
This companionship, if it could be called that, went just so far and no farther. With each day that passed the older beavers became more accustomed to seeing Baree. At the end of two weeks, if Baree had gone away, they would have missed him—but not in the same way that Baree would have missed the beavers. It was a matter of good-natured toleration on their part. With Baree it was different. He was stilluskahis, as Nepeese would have said; he still wanted mothering; he was still moved by the puppyish yearnings which he had not yet had the time to outgrow; and when night came—to speak that yearning quite plainly—he had the desire to go into the big beaver house with Umisk and his chums and sleep.
During this fortnight that followed Beaver-tooth’s exploit on the dam Baree ate his meals a mile up the creek, where there were plenty of crawfish. But the pond was home. Night always found him there, and a large part of his day. He slept at the end of the dam, or on top of it on particularly clear nights, and the beavers accepted him as a permanent guest. They worked in his presence as if he did not exist.
Baree was fascinated by this work, and he never grew tired of watching it. It puzzled and bewildered him. Day after day he saw them float timber and brush through the water for the new dam. He saw this dam growing steadily under their efforts. One day he lay within a dozen feet of an old beaver who was cutting down a tree six inches through. When the tree fell, and the old beaver scurried away, Baree scurried, too. Then he came back and smelled of the cutting, wondering what it was all about, and why Umisk’s uncle or grandfather or aunt had gone to all that trouble.
He still could not induce Umisk and the other young beavers to join him in play, and after the first week or so he gave up his efforts. In fact, their play puzzled him almost as much as the dam-building operations of the older beavers. Umisk, for instance, was fond of playing in the mud at the edge of the pond. He was like a very small boy. Where his elders floated timbers from three inches to a foot in diameter to the big dam, Umisk brought small sticks and twigs no larger around than a lead-pencil to his playground, and built a make-believe dam of his own.
Umisk would work an hour at a time on this play-dam as industriously as his father and mother were working on the big dam, and Baree would lie flat on his belly a few feet away, watching him and wondering mightily. And through this half-dry mud Umisk would also dig his miniature canals, just as a small boy might have dug his Mississippi River and pirate-infested oceans in the outflow of some back-lot spring. With his sharp little teeth he cut down his big timber—willow-sprouts never more than an inch in diameter; and when one of these four or five-foot sprouts toppled down, he undoubtedly felt as great a satisfaction as Beaver-tooth felt when he sent a seventy-foot birch crashing into the edge of the pond. Baree could not understand the fun of all this. He could see some reason for nibbling at sticks—he liked to sharpen his teeth on sticks himself; but it puzzled him to explain why Umisk so painstakingly stripped the bark from the sticks and swallowed it.
Another method of play still further discouraged Baree’s advances. A short distance from the spot where he had first seen Umisk there was a shelving bank that rose ten or twelve feet from the water, and this bank was used by the young beavers as a slide. It was worn smooth and hard. Umisk would climb up the bank at a point where it was not so steep. At the top of the slide he would put his tail out flat behind him and give himself a shove, shooting down the toboggan and landing in the water with a big splash. At times there were from six to ten young beavers engaged in this sport, and now and then one of the older beavers would waddle to the top of the slide and take a turn with the youngsters.
One afternoon, when the toboggan was particularly wet and slippery from recent use, Baree went up the beaver-path to the top of the bank, and began investigating. Nowhere had he found the beaver-smell so strong as on the slide. He began sniffing and incautiously went too far. In an instant his feet shot out from under him, and with a single wild yelp he went shooting down the toboggan. For the second time in his life he found himself struggling under water, and when a minute or two later he dragged himself up through the soft mud to the firmer footing of the shore, he had at last a very well-defined opinion of beaver play.
It may be that Umisk saw him. It may be that very soon the story of his adventure was known by all the inhabitants of Beaver Town. For when Baree came upon Umisk eating his supper of alder-bark that evening, Umisk stood his ground to the last inch, and for the first time they smelled noses. At least Baree sniffed audibly, and plucky little Umisk sat like a rolled-up sphinx. That was the final cementing of their friendship—on Baree’s part. He capered about extravagantly for a few moments, telling Umisk how much he liked him, and that they’d be great chums. Umisk didn’t talk. He didn’t make a move until he resumed his supper. But he was a companionable looking little fellow, for all that, and Baree was happier than he had been since the day he left the old windfall.
This friendship, even though it outwardly appeared to be quite one-sided, was decidedly fortunate for Umisk. When Baree was at the pond, he always kept as near to Umisk as possible, when he could find him. One day he was lying in a patch of grass, half asleep, while Umisk busied himself in a clump of alder-shoots a few yards away. It was the warning crack of a beaver tail that fully roused Baree; and then another and another, like pistol-shots. He jumped up. Everywhere beavers were scurrying for the pond.
Just then Umisk came out of the alders and hurried as fast as his short, fat legs would carry him toward the water. He had almost reached the mud when a lightning flash of red passed before Baree’s eyes in the afternoon sun, and in another instant Napakasew—the he-fox—had fastened his sharp fangs in Umisk’s throat. Baree heard his little friend’s agonized cry; he heard the frenziedflap-flap-flapof many tails—and his blood pounded suddenly with the thrill of excitement and rage.
As swiftly as the red fox himself, Baree darted to the rescue. He was as big and as heavy as the fox, and when he struck Napakasew, it was with a ferocious snarl that Pierrot might have heard on the farther side of the pond, and his teeth sank like knives into the shoulder of Umisk’s assailant. The fox was of a breed of forest highwaymen which kills from behind. He was not a fighter when it came fang-to-fang, unless cornered—and so fierce and sudden was Baree’s assault that Napakasew took to flight almost as quickly as he had begun his attack on Umisk.
Baree did not follow him, but went to Umisk, who lay half in the mud, whimpering and snuffling in a curious sort of way. Gently Baree nosed him, and after a moment or two Umisk got up on his webbed feet, while fully twenty or thirty beavers were making a tremendous fuss in the water near the shore.
After this the beaver-pond seemed more than ever like home to Baree.
CHAPTER XI
While lovely Nepeese was shuddering over her thrilling experience under the rock—while Pierrot still offered grateful thanks in his prayers for her deliverance and Baree was becoming more and more a fixture at the beaver-pond—Bush McTaggart was perfecting a little scheme of his own up at Post Lac Bain, about forty miles north and west. McTaggart had been factor at Lac Bain for seven years. In the Company’s books down in Winnipeg he was counted a remarkably successful man. The expense of his post was below the average, and his semi-annual report of furs always ranked among the first. After his name, kept on file in the main office, was one notation which said: “Gets more out of a dollar than any other man north of God’s Lake.”
The Indians knew why this was so. They called himNapao Wetikoo—the man-devil. This was under their breath—a name whispered sinisterly in the glow of tepee fires, or spoken softly where not even the winds might carry it to the ears of Bush McTaggart. They feared him; they hated him. They died of starvation and sickness, and the tighter Bush McTaggart clenched the fingers of his iron rule, the more meekly, it seemed to him, did they respond to his mastery. His was a small soul, hidden in the hulk of a brute, which rejoiced in power. And here—with the raw wilderness on four sides of him—his power knew no end. The Big Company was behind him. It had made him king of a domain in which there was little law except his own. And in return he gave back to the Company bales and bundles of furs beyond their expectation. It was not for them to have suspicions. They were a thousand or more miles away—and dollars counted.
Gregson might have told. Gregson was the Investigating Agent of that district, who visited McTaggart once each year. He might have reported that the Indians called McTaggartNapao Wetikoobecause he gave them only half price for their furs; he might have told the Company quite plainly that he kept the people of the trap-lines at the edge of starvation through every month of the winter, that he had them on their knees with his hands at their throats—putting the truth in a mild and pretty way—and that he always had a woman or a girl, Indian or halfbreed, living with him at the Post. But Gregson enjoyed his visits too much at Lac Bain. Always he could count on two weeks of coarse pleasures; and in addition to that, his own womenfolk at home wore a rich treasure of fur that came to them from McTaggart.
One evening, a week after the adventure of Nepeese and Baree under the rock, McTaggart sat under the glow of an oil lamp in his “store.” He had sent his little pippin-faced English clerk to bed, and he was alone. For six weeks there had been in him a great unrest. It was just six weeks ago that Pierrot had brought Nepeese on her first visit to Lac Bain since McTaggart had been factor there. She had taken his breath away. Since then he had been able to think of nothing but her. Twice in that six weeks he had gone down to Pierrot’s cabin. To-morrow he was going again. Marie, the slim Cree girl over in his cabin, he had forgotten—just as a dozen others before Marie had slipped out of his memory. It was Nepeese now. He had never seen anything quite so beautiful as Pierrot’s girl.
Audibly he cursed Pierrot as he looked at a sheet of paper under his hand, on which for an hour or more he had been making notes out of worn and dusty Company ledgers. It was Pierrot who stood in his way. Pierrot’s father, according to those notes, had been a full-blooded Frenchman. Therefore Pierrot was half French, and Nepeese was quarter French—though she was so beautiful he could have sworn there was not more than a drop or two of Indian blood in her veins. If they had been all Indian—Chippewayan, Cree, Ojibway, Dog Rib—anything—there would have been no trouble at all in the matter. He would have bent them to his power, and Nepeese would have come to his cabin, as Marie came six months ago. But there was the accursed French of it! Pierrot and Nepeese were different. And yet——
He smiled grimly, and his hands clenched tighter. After all, was not his power sufficient? Would even Pierrot dare stand against that? If Pierrot objected, he would drive him from the country—from the trapping regions that had come down to him as heritage from father and grandfather, and even before their day. He would make of Pierrot a wanderer and an outcast, as he had made wanderers and outcasts of a score of others who had lost his favour. No other Post would sell to or buy from Pierrot ifLe Bête—the black cross—was put after his name. That was his power—a law of the Factors that had come down through the centuries. It was a tremendous power for evil. It had brought him Marie, the slim, dark-eyed Cree girl, who hated him—and in spite of her hatred “kept house for him.” That was the polite way of explaining her presence if explanations were ever necessary.
McTaggart looked again at the notes he had made on the sheet of paper. Pierrot’s trapping-country, his own property according to the common law of the wilderness, was very valuable. During the last seven years he had received an average of a thousand dollars a year for his furs, for McTaggart had been unable to cheat Pierrot quite as completely as he had cheated the Indians. A thousand dollars a year! Pierrot would think twice before he gave that up. McTaggart chuckled as he crumpled the paper in his hand and prepared to put out the light. Under his close-cropped shaggy beard his reddish face blazed with the fire that was in his blood. It was an unpleasant face—like iron, merciless, filled with the look that gave him his name ofNapao Wetikoo. His eyes gleamed, and he drew a quick breath as he put out the light.
He chuckled again as he made his way through the darkness to the door. Nepeese as good as belonged to him. He would have her if it cost—Pierrot’s life. And—why not? It was all so easy. A shot on a lonely trap-line, a single knife-thrust—and who would know? Who would guess where Pierrot had gone? And it would all be Pierrot’s fault. For the last time he had seen Pierrot, he had made an honest proposition: he would marry Nepeese. Yes, even that. He had told Pierrot so. He had told Pierrot that when the latter was his father-in-law, he would pay him double price for furs.
And Pierrot had stared—had stared with that strange, stunned look in his face, like a man dazed by a blow from a club. And so if he did not get Nepeese without trouble it would all be Pierrot’s fault. To-morrow McTaggart would start again for the halfbreed’s country. And the next day Pierrot would have an answer for him. Bush McTaggart chuckled again when he went to bed.
Until the next to the last day Pierrot said nothing to Nepeese about what had passed between him and the factor at Lac Bain. Then he told her.
“He is a beast—a man-devil,” he said, when he had finished. “I would rather see you out there—with her—dead.” And he pointed to the tall spruce under which the princess mother lay.
Nepeese had not uttered a sound. But her eyes had grown bigger and darker, and there was a flush in her cheeks which Pierrot had never seen there before. She stood up when he had done, and she seemed taller to him. Never had she looked quite so much like a woman, and Pierrot’s eyes were deep-shadowed with fear and uneasiness as he watched her while she gazed off into the northwest—toward Lac Bain.
She was wonderful, this slip of a girl-woman. Her beauty troubled him. He had seen the look in Bush McTaggart’s eyes. He had heard the thrill in McTaggart’s voice. He had caught the desire of a beast in McTaggart’s face. It had frightened him at first. But now—he was not frightened. He was uneasy, but his hands were clenched. In his heart there was a smoldering fire. At last Nepeese turned and came and sat down beside him again, at his feet.
“He is coming to-morrow,ma chérie,” he said. “What shall I tell him?”
The Willow’s lips were red. Her eyes shone. But she did not look up at her father.
“Nothing, Nootawe—except that you are to say to him that I am the one to whom he must come—for what he seeks.”
Pierrot bent over and caught her smiling. The sun went down. His heart sank with it, like cold lead.
From Lac Bain to Pierrot’s cabin the trail cut within half a mile of the beaver-pond, a dozen miles from where Pierrot lived; and it was here, on a twist of the creek in which Wakayoo had caught fish for Baree, that Bush McTaggart made his camp for the night. Only twenty miles of the journey could be made by canoe, and as McTaggart was travelling the last stretch afoot, his camp was a simple affair—a few cut balsams, a light blanket, a small fire. Before he prepared his supper, the Factor drew a number of copper-wire snares from his small pack and spent half an hour in setting them in rabbit runways. This method of securing meat was far less arduous than carrying a gun in hot weather, and it was certain. Half a dozen snares were good for at least three rabbits, and one of these three was sure to be young and tender enough for the frying-pan. After he had placed his snares McTaggart set a skillet of bacon over the coals and boiled his coffee.
Of all the odours of a camp, the smell of bacon reaches farthest in the forest. It needs no wind. It drifts on its own wings. On a still night a fox will sniff it a mile away—twice that far if the air is moving in the right direction. It was this smell of bacon that came to Baree where he lay in his hollow on top of the beaver-dam.
Since his experience in the cañon and the death of Wakayoo, he had not fared particularly well. Caution had held him near the pond, and he had lived almost entirely on crawfish. This new perfume that came with the night wind roused his hunger. But it was elusive: now he could smell it—the next instant it was gone. He left the dam and began questing for the source of it in the forest, until after a time he lost it altogether. McTaggart had finished frying his bacon and was eating it.
It was a splendid night that followed. Perhaps Baree would have slept through it in his nest on the top of the dam if the bacon smell had not stirred the new hunger in him. Since his adventure in the cañon, the deeper forest had held a dread for him, especially at night. But this night was like a pale, golden day: it was moonless; but the stars shone like a billion distant lamps, flooding the world in a soft and billowy sea of light. A gentle whisper of wind made pleasant sounds in the treetops. Beyond that it was very quiet, for it wasPuskowepesim—the Moulting Moon—and the wolves were not hunting, the owls had lost their voice, the foxes slunk with he silence of shadows, and even the beavers had begun to cease their labours. The horns of the moose, the deer, and the caribou were in tender velvet, and they moved but little and fought not at all. It was late July, Moulting Moon of the Cree, Moon of Silence for the Chippewayan.
In this silence Baree began to hunt. He stirred up a family of half-grown partridges, but they escaped him. He pursued a rabbit that was swifter than he. For an hour he had no luck. Then he heard a sound that made every drop of blood in him thrill. He was close to McTaggart’s camp, and what he had heard was a rabbit in one of McTaggart’s snares. He came out into a little starlit open and there he saw the rabbit going through a most marvellous pantomime. It amazed him for a moment, and he stopped in his tracks.
Wapoos, the rabbit, had run his furry head into the snare, and his first frightened jump had “shot” the sapling to which the copper wire was attached so that he was now hung half in midair, with only his hind feet touching the ground. And there he was dancing madly while the noose about his neck slowly choked him to death.
Baree gave a sort of gasp. He could understand nothing of the part that the wire and the sapling were playing in this curious game. All he could see was that Wapoos was hopping and dancing about on his hind legs in a most puzzling and unrabbit-like fashion. It may be that he thought it some sort of play. In this instance, however, he did not regard Wapoos as he had looked on Umisk the beaver. He knew that Wapoos made mighty fine eating, and after another moment or two of hesitation he darted upon his prey.
Wapoos, half gone already, made almost no struggle, and in the glow of the stars Baree finished him, and for half an hour afterward he feasted.
McTaggart had heard no sound, for the snare into which Wapoos had run his head was the one set farthest from his camp. Beside the smouldering coals of his fire he sat with his back to a tree, smoking his black pipe and dreaming covetously of Nepeese, when Baree continued his night-wandering. Baree no longer had the desire to hunt. He was too full. But he nosed in and out of the starlit spaces, enjoying immensely the stillness and the golden glow of the night. He was following a rabbit-run when he came to a place where two fallen logs left a trail no wider than his body. He squeezed through; something tightened about his neck; there was a sudden snap—a swish as the sapling was released from its “trigger”—and Baree was jerked off his feet so suddenly that he had no time to conjecture as to what was happening.
The yelp in his throat died in a gurgle, and the next moment he was going through the pantomimic actions of Wapoos, who was having his vengeance inside him. For the life of him Baree could not keep from dancing about, while the wire grew tighter and tighter about his neck. When he snapped at the wire and flung the weight of his body to the ground, the sapling would bend obligingly, and then—in its rebound—would yank him for an instant completely off the earth. Furiously he struggled. It was a miracle that the fine wire held him. In a few moments more it must have broken—but McTaggart had heard him! The Factor caught up his blanket and a heavy stick as he hurried toward the snare. It was not a rabbit making those sounds—he knew that. Perhaps a fisher-cat—a lynx, a fox, a young wolf——
It was the wolf he thought of first when he saw Baree at the end of the wire. He dropped the blanket and raised the club. If there had been clouds overhead, or the stars had been less brilliant, Baree would have died as surely as Wapoos had died. With the club raised over his head McTaggart saw in time the white star, the white-tipped ear, and the jet black of Baree’s coat.
With a swift movement he exchanged the club for the blanket.
In that hour, could McTaggart have looked ahead to the days that were to come, he would have used the club. Could he have foreseen the great tragedy in which Baree was to play a vital part, wrecking his hopes and destroying his world, he would have beaten him to a pulp there under the light of the stars. And Baree, could he have foreseen what was to happen between this brute with a white skin and the most beautiful thing in the forests, would have fought even more bitterly before he surrendered himself to the smothering embrace of the Factor’s blanket. On this night Fate had played a strange hand for them both, and only that Fate, and perhaps the stars above, held a knowledge of what its outcome was to be.
CHAPTER XII
Half an hour later Rush McTaggart’s fire was burning brightly again. In the glow of it Baree lay trussed up like an Indian papoose, tied into a balloon-shaped ball withbabichethong, his head alone showing where his captor had cut a hole for it in the blanket. He was hopelessly caught—so closely imprisoned in the blanket that he could scarcely move a muscle of his body. A few feet away from him McTaggart was bathing a bleeding hand in a basin of water. There was also a red streak down the side of McTaggart’s bullish neck.
“You little devil!” he snarled at Baree. “You little devil!”
He reached over suddenly and gave Baree’s head a vicious blow with his heavy hand.
“I ought to beat your brains out, and—I believe I will!”
Baree watched him as he picked up a stick close at his side—a bit of firewood. Pierrot had chased him, but this was the first time he had been near enough to the man-monster to see the red glow in his eyes. They were not like the eyes of the wonderful creature who had almost caught him in the web of her hair, and who had crawled after him under the rock. They were beast-eyes. They made him shrink and try to draw his head back into the blanket as the stick was raised. At the same time he snarled. His white fangs gleamed in the firelight. His ears were flat. He wanted to sink his teeth in the red throat where he had already drawn blood.
The stick fell. It fell again and again, and when McTaggart was done, Baree lay half stunned, his eyes partly closed by the blows, and his mouth bleeding.
“That’s the way we take the devil out of a wild dog,” snarled McTaggart. “I guess you won’t try the biting game again, eh, youngster? A thousand devils—but you went almost to the bone of this hand!”
He began washing the wound again. Baree’s teeth had sunk deep, and there was a troubled look in the Factor’s face. It was July—a bad month for bites. From his kit he got a small flask of whisky and turned a bit of the raw liquor on the wound, cursing Baree as it burned into his flesh.
Baree’s half-shut eyes were fixed on him steadily. He knew that at last he had met the deadliest of all his enemies. And yet he was not afraid. The club in Bush McTaggart’s hand had not killed his spirit. It had killed his fear. It had roused in him a hatred such as he had never known—not even when he was fighting Oohoomisew, the outlaw owl. The vengeful animosity of the wolf was burning in him now, along with the savage courage of the dog. He did not flinch when McTaggart approached him again. He made an effort to raise himself, that he might spring at this man-monster. In the effort, swaddled as he was in the blanket, he rolled over in a helpless and ludicrous heap.
The sight of it touched McTaggart’s risibilities, and he laughed. He sat down with his back to the tree again and filled his pipe.
Baree did not take his eyes from McTaggart as he smoked. He watched the man when the latter stretched himself out on the bare ground and went to sleep. He listened, still later, to the man-monster’s heinous snoring. Again and again during the long night he struggled to free himself. He would never forget that night. It was terrible. In the thick, hot folds of the blanket his limbs and body were suffocated until the blood almost stood still in his veins. Yet he did not whine.
They began to journey before the sun was up, for if Baree’s blood was almost dead within him, Bush McTaggart’s was scorching his body with the heat of its anticipation. He made his last plans as he walked swiftly through the forest with Baree under his arm. He would send Pierrot at once for Father Grotin at his Mission seventy miles to the west. He would marry Nepeese—yes, marry her! That would tickle Pierrot. And he would be alone with Nepeese while Pierrot was gone for the missioner.
This thought flamed McTaggart’s blood like strong whisky. There was no thought in his hot and unreasoning brain of what Nepeese might say—of what she might think. He was not after the soul of her. His hand clenched, and he laughed harshly as there flashed on him for an instant the thought that perhaps Pierrot would not want to give her up. Pierrot! Bah! It would not be the first time he had killed a man—or the second.
McTaggart laughed again, and he walked still faster. There was no chance of his losing—no chance for Nepeese to get away from him. He—Bush McTaggart—was lord of this wilderness, master of its people, arbiter of their destinies. He was power—and the law.
The sun was well up when Pierrot, standing in front of his cabin with Nepeese, pointed to a rise in the trail three or four hundred yards away, over which McTaggart had just appeared.
“He is coming.”
With a face which had aged since last night he looked at Nepeese. Again he saw the dark glow in her eyes and the deepening red of her parted lips, and his heart was sick again with dread. Was it possible——
She turned on him, her eyes shining, her voice trembling.
“Remember, Nootawe—you must send him to me for his answer,” she cried quickly, and she darted into the cabin. With a cold, gray face Pierrot faced Bush McTaggart.
CHAPTER XIII
From the window, her face screened by the folds of the curtain which she had made for it, the Willow saw what happened outside. She was not smiling now. She was breathing quickly, and her body was tense. Bush McTaggart paused not a dozen feet from the window and shook hands with Pierrot, her father. She heard McTaggart’s coarse voice, his boisterous greeting, and then she saw him showing Pierrot what he carried under his arm. There came to her distinctly his explanation of how he had caught his captive in a rabbit-snare. He unwrapped the blanket. Nepeese gave a cry of amazement. In an instant she was out beside them. She did not look at McTaggart’s red face, blazing in its joy and exultation.
“It is Baree!” she cried.
She took the bundle from McTaggart and turned to Pierrot.
“Tell him that Baree belongs to me,” she said.
She hurried into the cabin. McTaggart looked after her, stunned and amazed. Then he looked at Pierrot. A man half blind could have seen that Pierrot was as amazed as he. Nepeese had not spoken to him—the Factor of Lac Bain! She had notlookedat him! And she had taken the dog from him with as little concern as though he had been a wooden man. The red in his face deepened as he stared from Pierrot to the door through which she had gone, and which she had closed behind her.
On the floor of the cabin Nepeese dropped on her knees and finished unwrapping the blanket. She was not afraid of Baree. She had forgotten McTaggart. And then, as Baree rolled in a limp heap on the floor, she saw his half-closed eyes and the dry blood on his jaws, and the light left her face as swiftly as the sun is shadowed by a cloud. “Baree,” she cried softly. “Baree—Baree!”
She partly lifted him in her two hands. Baree’s head sagged. His body was numbed until he was powerless to move. His legs were without feeling. He could scarcely see. But he heard her voice! It was the same voice that had come to him that day he had felt the sting of the bullet, the voice that had pleaded with him under the rock!
The voice of the Willow thrilled Baree. It seemed to stir the sluggish blood in his veins, and he opened his eyes wider and saw again the wonderful stars that had glowed at him so softly the day of Wakayoo’s death. One of the Willow’s long braids fell over her shoulder, and he smelled again the sweet scent of her hair as her hand caressed him and her voice talked to him. Then she got up suddenly and left him, and he did not move while he waited for her. In a moment she was back with a basin of water and a cloth. Gently she washed the blood from his eyes and mouth. And still Baree made no move. He scarcely breathed. But Nepeese saw the little quivers that shot through his body when her hand touched him, like electric shocks.
“He beat you with a club,” she was saying, her dark eyes within a foot of Baree’s. “He beat you! That man-beast!”
There came an interruption. The door opened, and the man-beast stood looking down on them, a grin on his red face. Instantly Baree showed that he was alive. He sprang back from under the Willow’s hand with a sudden snarl and faced McTaggart. The hair of his spine stood up like a brush; his fangs gleamed menacingly, and his eyes burned like living coals.
“There is a devil in him,” said McTaggart. “He is wild—born of the wolf. You must be careful or he will take off a hand,ka sakahet!” It was the first time he had called her that lover’s name in Cree—sweetheart! Her heart pounded. She bent her head for a moment over her clenched hands, and McTaggart—looking down on what he thought was her confusion—laid his hand caressingly on her hair. From the door Pierrot had heard the word, and now he saw the caress, and he raised a hand as if to shut out the sight of a sacrilege.
“Mon Dieu!” he breathed.
In the next instant he had given a sharp cry of wonder that mingled with a sudden yell of pain from McTaggart. Like a flash Baree had darted across the floor and fastened his teeth in the Factor’s leg. They had bitten deep before McTaggart freed himself with a powerful kick. With an oath he snatched his revolver from its holster. The Willow was ahead of him. With a little cry she darted to Baree and caught him in her arms. As she looked up at McTaggart, her soft, bare throat was within a few inches of Baree’s naked fangs. Her eyes blazed.
“You beat him!” she cried. “He hates you—hates you——”
With an oath McTaggart snatched his revolver from its holster. The Willow was ahead of him. With a little cry she darted to Baree and caught him in her arms.... Her eyes blazed. “You beat him!” she cried. “He hates you—hates you—hates you.”
With an oath McTaggart snatched his revolver from its holster. The Willow was ahead of him. With a little cry she darted to Baree and caught him in her arms.... Her eyes blazed. “You beat him!” she cried. “He hates you—hates you—hates you.”
With an oath McTaggart snatched his revolver from its holster. The Willow was ahead of him. With a little cry she darted to Baree and caught him in her arms.... Her eyes blazed. “You beat him!” she cried. “He hates you—hates you—hates you.”
“Let him go!” called Pierrot in an agony of fear.
“Mon Dieu!I say let him go or he will tear the life from you!”
“He hates you—hates you—hates you——” the Willow was repeating over and over again into McTaggart’s startled face. Then suddenly she turned to her father. “No, he will not tear the life from me,” she cried. “See! It is Baree. Did I not tell you that? It is Baree! Is it not proof that he defended me——”
“From me!” gasped McTaggart, his face darkening.
Pierrot advanced and laid a hand on McTaggart’s arm. He was smiling.
“Let us leave them to fight it out between themselves, m’sieu,” he said. “They are two little firebrands, and we are not safe. If she is bitten——”
He shrugged his shoulders. A great load had been lifted from them suddenly. His voice was soft and persuasive. And now the anger had gone out of the Willow’s face. A coquettish uplift of her eyes caught McTaggart, and she looked straight at him half smiling, as she spoke to her father:
“I will join you soon,mon père—you and M’sieu the Factor from Lac Bain!”
There were undeniable little devils in her eyes, McTaggart thought—little devils laughing full at him as she spoke, setting his brain afire and his blood to running wildly. Those eyes—full of dancing witches! How he would tame them and play with them—very soon now! He followed Pierrot outside. In his exultation he no longer felt the smart of Baree’s teeth.
“I will show you my new cariole that I have made for winter, m’sieu,” said Pierrot as the door closed behind them.
Half an hour later Nepeese came out of the cabin. She could see that Pierrot and the Factor had been talking about something that had not been pleasant to her father. His face was strained. She caught in his eyes the smoulder of fire which he was trying to smother, as one might smother flames under a blanket. McTaggart’s jaws were set, but his eyes flared up with pleasure when he saw her. She knew what it was about. The Factor from Lac Bain had been demanding his answer of Pierrot, and Pierrot had been telling him what she had insisted upon—that he must come to her. And he was coming! She turned with a quick beating of the heart and hurried down a little path. She heard McTaggart’s footsteps behind her, and threw the flash of a smile over her shoulder. But her teeth were set tight. The nails of her fingers were cutting into the palms of her hands.
Pierrot stood without moving. He watched them as they disappeared into the edge of the forest, Nepeese still a few steps ahead of McTaggart. Out of his breast rose a sharp breath.
“Par les mille cornes du diable!” he swore softly. “Is it possible—that she smiles from her heart at that beast?Non!It is impossible. And yet—if it is so——”
One of his brown hands tightened convulsively about the handle of the knife in his belt, and slowly he began to follow them.
McTaggart did not hurry to overtake Nepeese. She was following the narrow path deeper into the forest, and he was glad of that. They would be alone—away from Pierrot. He was ten steps behind her, and again the Willow smiled at him over her shoulder. Her body moved sinuously and swiftly. She was keeping accurate measurement of the distance between them—but McTaggart did not guess that this was why she looked back every now and then. He was satisfied to let her go on. When she turned from the narrow trail into a side path that scarcely bore the mark of travel, his heart gave an exultant jump. If she kept on, he would very soon have her alone—a good distance from the cabin. The blood ran hot in his face. He did not speak to her, through fear that she would stop. Ahead of them he heard the rumble of water. It was the creek running through the chasm.
Nepeese was making straight for that sound. With a little laugh she started to run, and when she stood at the edge of the chasm, McTaggart was fully fifty yards behind her. Twenty feet sheer down there was a deep pool between the rock walls, a pool so deep that it was like blue ink. She turned to face the Factor from Lac Bain. He had never looked more like a red beast to her. Until this moment she had been unafraid. But now—in an instant—he terrified her. Before she could speak what she had planned to say, he was at her side, and had taken her face between his two great hands, his coarse fingers twining in the silken strands of her thick braids where they fell over her shoulders at the neck.
“Ka sakahet!” he cried passionately. “Pierrot said you would have an answer for me. But I need no answer now. You are mine! Mine!”
She gave a cry. It was a gasping, broken cry. His arms were about her like bands of iron, crushing her slender body, shutting off her breath, turning the world almost black for her. She could neither struggle nor cry out. She felt the hot passion of his lips on her face, heard his voice—and then came a moment’s freedom, and air into her strangled lungs. Pierrot was calling! He had come to the fork in the trail, and he was calling the Willow’s name!
McTaggart’s hot hand came over her mouth.
“Don’t answer,” she heard him say.
Strength—anger—hatred flared up in her, and fiercely she struck the hand down. Something in her wonderful eyes held McTaggart. They blazed into his very soul.
“Bête noir!” she panted at him, freeing herself from the last touch of his hands. “Beast—black beast!” Her voice trembled, and her face flamed. “See—I came to show you my pool—and tell you what you wanted to hear—and you—you—have crushed me like a beast—like a great rock——See! down there—it is my pool!”
She had not planned it like this. She had intended to be smiling, even laughing, in this moment. But McTaggart had spoiled them—her carefully made plans! And yet, as she pointed, the Factor from Lac Bain looked for an instant over the edge of the chasm. And then she laughed—laughed as she gave him a sudden shove from behind.
“And that is my answer, M’sieu le Facteur from Lac Bain!” she cried tauntingly as he plunged headlong into the deep pool between the rock walls.