CHAPTER V

As the Willow pulled the trigger of her rifle, Baree sprang into the air. He felt the force of the bullet before he heard the report of the gun. It lifted him off his feet, and then sent him rolling over and over as if he had been struck a hideous blow with a club. For a flash he did not feel pain. Then it ran through him like a knife of fire, and with that pain the dog in him rose above the wolf, and he let out a wild outcry of puppyish yapping as he rolled and twisted on the ground.

Pierrot and Nepeese had stepped from behind the balsams, the Willow’s beautiful eyes shining with pride at the accuracy of her shot. Instantly she caught her breath. Her brown fingers clutched at the barrel of her rifle. The chuckle of satisfaction died on Pierrot’s lips as Baree’s cries of pain filled the forest.

“Uchi Moosis!” gasped Nepeese, in her Cree.

Pierrot caught the rifle from her.

“Diable!A dog—a puppy!” he cried.

He started on a run for Baree. But in their amazement they had lost a few seconds and Baree’s dazed senses were returning. He saw them clearly as they came across the open—a new kind of monster of the forests! With a final wail he darted back into the deep shadows of the trees. It was almost sunset, and he ran for the thick gloom of the heavy spruce near the creek. He had shivered at sight of the bear and the moose, but for the first time he now sensed the real meaning of danger. And it was close after him. He could hear the crashing of the two-legged beasts in pursuit; strange cries were almost at his heels—and then suddenly he plunged without warning into a hole.

It was a shock to have the earth go out from under his feet like that, but Baree did not yelp. The wolf was dominant in him again. It urged him to remain where he was, making no move, no sound—scarcely breathing. The voices were over him; the strange feet almost stumbled in the hole where he lay. Looking out of his dark hiding-place, he could see one of his enemies. It was Nepeese, the Willow. She was standing so that a last glow of the day fell upon her face. Baree did not take his eyes from her. Above his pain there rose in him a strange and thrilling fascination. The girl put her two hands to her mouth and in a voice that was soft and plaintive and amazingly comforting to his terrified little heart, cried:

“Uchimoo—Uchimoo—Uchimoo!”

And then he heard another voice; and this voice, too, was far less terrible than many sounds he had listened to in the forests.

“We cannot find him, Nepeese,” the voice was saying. “He has crawled off to die. It is too bad. Come.”

Where Baree had stood in the edge of the open Pierrot paused and pointed to a birch sapling that had been cut clean off by the Willow’s bullet. Nepeese understood. The sapling, no larger than her thumb, had turned her shot a trifle and had saved Baree from instant death.

She turned again, and called:

“Uchimoo—Uchimoo—Uchimoo!”

Her eyes were no longer filled with the thrill of slaughter.

“He would not understand that,” said Pierrot, leading the way across the open. “He is wild—born of the wolves. Perhaps he was of Koomo’s lead-bitch, who ran away to hunt with the packs last winter.”

“And he will die——”

“Ayetun—yes, he will die.”

But Baree had no idea of dying. He was too tough a youngster to be shocked to death by a bullet passing through the soft flesh of his fore-leg. That was what had happened. His leg was torn to the bone, but the bone itself was untouched. He waited until the moon had risen before he crawled out of his hole.

His leg had grown stiff then; it had stopped bleeding, but his whole body was racked by a terrible pain. A dozen Papayuchisews, all holding tight to his ears and nose, could not have hurt him more. Every time he moved, a sharp twinge shot through him; and yet he persisted in moving. Instinctively he felt that by travelling away from the hole he would get away from danger. This was the best thing that could have happened to him, for a little later a porcupine came wandering along, chattering to itself in its foolish, good-humoured way, and fell with a fat thud into the hole. Had Baree remained, he would have been so full of quills that he must surely have died.

Nepeese, the trapper’s daughter, known to the forest men as “The Willow,” who became a big factor in the life of the pup Baree.

In another way the exercise of travel was good for Baree. It gave his wound no opportunity to “set,” as Pierrot would have said, for in reality his hurt was more painful than serious. For the first hundred yards he hobbled along on three legs, and after that he found that he could use his fourth by humouring it a great deal. He followed the creek for a half-mile. Whenever a bit of brush touched his wound, he would snap at it viciously, and instead of whimpering when he felt one of the sharp twinges shooting through him, an angry little growl gathered in his throat, and his teeth clicked. Now that he was out of the hole, the effect of the Willow’s shot was stirring every drop of wolf-blood in his body. In him there was a growing animosity—a feeling of rage not against any one thing in particular, but against all things. It was not the feeling with which he had fought Papayuchisew, the young owl. On this night the dog in him had disappeared. An accumulation of misfortunes had descended upon him, and out of these misfortunes—and his present hurt—the wolf had risen savage and vengeful.

This was the first night Baree had travelled. He was, for the time, unafraid of anything that might creep up on him out of the darkness. The blackest shadows had lost their thrill. It was the first big fight between the two natures that were born in him—the wolf and the dog—and the dog was vanquished. Now and then he stopped to lick his wound, and as he licked it he growled, as though for the hurt itself he held a personal antagonism. If Pierrot could have seen and heard, he would have understood very quickly, and he would have said: “Let him die. The club will never take that devil out of him.”

In this humour Baree came, an hour later, out of the heavy timber of the creek-bottom into the more open spaces of a small plain that ran along the foot of a ridge. It was in this plain that Oohoomisew hunted. Oohoomisew was a huge snow-owl. He was the patriarch among all the owls of Pierrot’s trapping domain. He was so old that he was almost blind, and therefore he never hunted as other owls hunted. He did not hide himself in the black cover of spruce- and balsam-tops, or float softly through the night, ready in an instant to swoop down upon his prey. His eyesight was so poor that from a spruce-top he could not have seen a rabbit at all, and he might have mistaken a fox for a mouse.

So old Oohoomisew, learning wisdom from experience, hunted from ambush. He would squat on the ground, and for hours at a time he would remain there without making a sound and scarcely moving a feather, waiting with the patience of Job for something to eat to come his way. Now and then he had made mistakes. Twice he had mistaken a lynx for a rabbit, and in the second attack he had lost a foot, so that when he slumbered aloft during the day he hung to his perch with one claw. Crippled, nearly blind, and so old that he had long ago lost the tufts of feathers over his ears, he was still a giant in strength, and when he was angry, one could hear the snap of his beak twenty yards away.

For three nights he had been unlucky, and to-night he had been particularly unfortunate. Two rabbits had come his way, and he had lunged at each of them from his cover. The first he had missed entirely; the second had left with him a mouthful of fur—and that was all. He was ravenously hungry, and he was gritting his bill in his bad temper when he heard Baree approaching.

Even if Baree could have seen under the dark bush ahead, and had discovered Oohoomisew ready to dart from his ambush, it is not likely that he would have gone very far aside. His own fighting blood was up. He, too, was ready for war.

Very indistinctly Oohoomisew saw him at last, coming across the little open which he was watching. He squatted down. His feathers ruffled up until he was like a ball. His almost sightless eyes glowed like two bluish pools of fire. Ten feet away, Baree stopped for a moment and licked his wound. Oohoomisew waited cautiously. Again Baree advanced, passing within six feet of the bush. With a swift hop and a sudden thunder of his powerful wings the great owl was upon him.

This time Baree let out no cry of pain or of fright. The wolf iskipichi-mao, as the Indians say. No hunter ever heard a trapped wolf whine for mercy at the sting of a bullet or the beat of a club. He dies with his fangs bared. To-night it was a wolf-whelp that Oohoomisew was attacking, and not a dog-pup. The owl’s first rush keeled Baree over, and for a moment he was smothered under the huge, outspread wings, while Oohoomisew—pinioning him down—hopped for a claw-hold with his one good foot, and struck fiercely with his beak.

One blow of that beak anywhere about the head would have settled for a rabbit, but at the first thrust Oohoomisew discovered that it was not a rabbit he was holding under his wings. A blood-curdling snarl answered the blow, and Oohoomisew remembered the lynx, his lost foot, and his narrow escape with his life. The old pirate might have beaten a retreat, but Baree was no longer the puppyish Baree of that hour in which he had fought young Papayuchisew. Experience and hardship had aged and strengthened him; his jaws had passed quickly from the bone-licking to the bone-cracking age—and before Oohoomisew could get away, if he was thinking of flight at all, Baree’s fangs closed with a vicious snap on his one good leg.

In the stillness of night there rose a still greater thunder of wings, and for a few moments Baree closed his eyes to keep from being blinded by Oohoomisew’s furious blows. But he hung on grimly, and as his teeth met through the flesh of the old night-pirate’s leg, his angry snarl carried defiance to Oohoomisew’s ears. Rare good fortune had given him that grip on the leg, and Baree knew that triumph or defeat depended on his ability to hold it. The old owl had no other claw to sink into him, and it was impossible—caught as he was—for him to tear at Baree with his beak. So he continued to beat that thunder of blows with his four-foot wings.

The wings made a great tumult about Baree, but they did not hurt him. He buried his fangs deeper. His snarls rose more fiercely as he got the taste of Oohoomisew’s blood, and through him there surged more hotly the desire to kill this monster of the night, as though in the death of this creature he had the opportunity of avenging himself for all the hurts and hardships that had befallen him since he lost his mother.

Oohoomisew had never felt a great fear until now. The lynx had snapped at him but once—and was gone, leaving him crippled. But the lynx had not snarled in that wolfish way, and it had not hung on. A thousand and one nights Oohoomisew had listened to the wolf-howl. Instinct had told him what it meant. He had seen the packs pass swiftly through the night, and always when they passed he had kept in the deepest shadows. To him, as for all other wild things, the wolf-howl stood for death. But until now, with Baree’s fangs buried in his leg, he had never sensed fully the wolf-fear. It had taken it years to enter into his slow, stupid head—but now that it was there, it possessed him as no other thing had ever possessed him in all his life.

Suddenly Oohoomisew ceased his beating and launched himself upward. Like huge fans his powerful wings churned the air, and Baree felt himself lifted suddenly from the earth. Still he held on—and in a moment both bird and beast fell back with a thud.

Oohoomisew tried again. This time he was more successful, and he rose fully six feet into the air with Baree. They fell again. A third time the old outlaw fought to wing himself free of Baree’s grip; and then, exhausted, he lay with his giant wings outspread, hissing and cracking his bill.

Under those wings Baree’s mind worked with the swift instincts of the killer. Suddenly he changed his hold, burying his fangs into the under part of Oohoomisew’s body. They sank into three inches of feathers. Swift as Baree had been, Oohoomisew was equally swift to take advantage of his opportunity. In an instant he had swooped upward. There was a jerk, a rending of feathers from flesh—and Baree was alone on the field of battle.

Baree had not killed, but he had conquered. His first great day—or night—had come. The world was filled with a new promise for him, as vast as the night itself. And after a moment he sat back on his haunches, sniffing the air for his beaten enemy; and then, as if defying the feathered monster to come back and fight to the end, he pointed his sharp little muzzle up to the stars and sent forth his first babyish wolf-howl into the night.

CHAPTER VI

Baree’s fight with Oohoomisew was good medicine for him. It not only gave him great confidence in himself, but it also cleared the fever of ugliness from his blood. He no longer snapped and snarled at things as he went on through the night.

It was a wonderful night. The moon was straight overhead, and the sky was filled with stars, so that in the open spaces the light was almost like that of day, except that it was softer and more beautiful. It was very still. There was no wind in the treetops, and it seemed to Baree that the howl he had given must have echoed to the end of the world.

Now and then Baree heard a sound—and always he stopped, attentive and listening. Far away he heard the long, soft mooing of a cow moose; he heard a great splashing in the water of a small lake that he came to, and once there came to him the sharp cracking of horn against horn—two bucks settling a little difference of opinion a quarter of a mile away. But it was always the wolf-howl that made him sit and listen longest, his heart beating with a strange impulse which he did not as yet understand. It was the call of his breed, growing in him slowly but insistently.

He was still a wanderer—pupamootao, the Indians call it. It is this “wander spirit” that inspires for a time nearly every creature of the wild as soon as it is able to care for itself—nature’s scheme, perhaps, for doing away with too close family relations and possibly dangerous interbreeding. Baree, like the young wolf seeking new hunting-grounds, or the young fox discovering a new world, had no reason or method in his wandering. He was simply “travelling”—going on. He wanted something which he could not find. The wolf-note brought it to him.

The stars and the moon filled Baree with a yearning for this something. The distant sounds impinged upon him his great aloneness. And instinct told him that only by questing could he find. It was not so much Kazan and Gray Wolf that he missed now—not so much motherhood and home as it was companionship. Now that he had fought the wolfish rage out of him in his battle with Oohoomisew, the dog part of him had come into its own again—the lovable half of him, the part that wanted to snuggle up near something that was alive and friendly, small odds whether it wore feathers or fur, was clawed or hoofed.

He was sore from the Willow’s bullet, and he was sore from battle, and toward dawn he lay down under a shelter of alders at the edge of a second small lake and rested until midday. Then he began questing in the reeds and close to the pond-lilies for food. He found a dead jackfish, partly eaten by a mink, and finished it.

His wound was much less painful this afternoon, and by nightfall he scarcely noticed it at all. Since his almost tragic end at the hands of Nepeese, he had been travelling in a general northeasterly direction, following instinctively the run of the water-ways; but his progress had been slow, and when darkness came again he was not more than eight or ten miles from the hole into which he had fallen after the Willow had shot him.

Baree did not travel far this night. The fact that his wound had come with dusk, and his fight with Oohoomisew still later, filled him with caution. Experience had taught him that the dark shadows and the black pits in the forest were possible ambuscades of danger. He was no longer afraid, as he had once been, but he had had fighting enough for a time, and so he accepted circumspection as the better part of valour and held himself aloof from the perils of darkness. It was a strange instinct that made him seek his bed on the top of a huge rock up which he had some difficulty in climbing. Perhaps it was a harkening back to the days of long ago when Gray Wolf, in her first motherhood, sought refuge at the summit of the Sun Rock which towered high above the forest-world of which she and Kazan were a part, and where later she was blinded in her battle with the lynx.

Baree’s rock, instead of rising for a hundred feet or more straight up, was possibly as high as a man’s head. It was in the edge of the creek-bottom, with the spruce forest close at his back. For many hours he did not sleep, but lay keenly alert, his ears tuned to catch every sound that came out of the dark world about him. There was more than curiosity in his alertness to-night. His education had broadened immensely in one way: he had learned that he was a very small part of all this wonderful earth that lay under the stars and the moon, and he was keenly alive with the desire to become better acquainted with it without any more fighting or hurt. To-night he knew what it meant when he saw now and then gray shadows float silently out of the forest into the moonlight—the owls, monsters of the breed with which he had fought. He heard the crackling of hoofed feet and the smashing of heavy bodies in the underbrush. He heard again the mooing of the moose. Voices came to him that he had not heard before—the sharpyap-yap-yapof a fox, the unearthly, laughing cry of a great Northern loon on a lake half a mile away, the scream of a lynx that came floating through miles of forest, the low, soft croaks of the nighthawks between himself and the stars. He heard strange whisperings in the treetops—whisperings of the winds; and once, in the heart of a dead stillness, a buck whistled shrilly close behind his rock—and at the wolf-scent in the air shot away in a terror-stricken gray streak.

All these sounds held their new meaning for Baree. Swiftly he was coming into his knowledge of the wilderness. His eyes gleamed; his blood thrilled. For many minutes at a time he scarcely moved. But of all the sounds that came to him, the wolf-cry thrilled him most. Again and again he listened to it. At times it was far away, so far that it was like a whisper, dying away almost before it reached him; and then again it would come to him full-throated, hot with the breath of the chase, calling him to the red thrill of the hunt, to the wild orgy of torn flesh and running blood—calling, calling, calling. That was it, calling him to his own kin, to the bone of his bone and the flesh of his flesh—to the wild, fierce hunting-packs of his mother’s tribe! It was Gray Wolf’s voice seeking for him in the night—Gray Wolf’s blood inviting him to the Brotherhood of the Pack.

Baree trembled as he listened. In his throat he whined softly. He edged to the sheer face of the rock. He wanted to go; nature was urging him to go. But the call of the wild was struggling against odds; for in him was the dog, with its generations of subdued and sleeping instincts—and all that night the dog in him kept Baree to the top of his rock.

Next morning Baree found many crawfish along the creek, and he feasted on their succulent flesh until he felt that he would never be hungry again. Nothing had tasted quite so good since he had eaten the partridge of which he had robbed Sekoosew the ermine.

In the middle of the afternoon Baree came into a part of the forest that was very quiet and very peaceful. The creek had deepened. In places its banks swept out until they formed small ponds. Twice he made considerable detours to get around these ponds. He travelled very quietly, listening and watching. Not since the ill-fated day he had left the old windfall had he felt quite so much at home as now. It seemed to him that at last he was treading country which he knew, and where he would find friends. Perhaps this was another miracle-mystery of instinct—of nature. For he was in old Beaver-tooth’s domain. It was here that his father and mother had hunted in the days before he was born. It was not far from here that Kazan and Beaver-tooth had fought that mighty duel under water, from which Kazan had escaped with his life without another breath to lose.

Baree would never know these things. He would never know that he was travelling over old trails. But something deep in him gripped at him strangely. He sniffed the air, as if in it he found the scent of familiar things. It was only a faint breath—an indefinable promise that brought him to the point of a mysterious anticipation.

The forest grew deeper. It was wonderful. There was no undergrowth, and travelling under the trees was like being in a vast, mystery-filled cavern through the roof of which the light of day broke softly, brightened here and there by golden splashes of the sun. For a mile Baree made his way quietly through this forest. He saw nothing but a few winged flittings of birds; there was almost no sound. Then he came to a still larger pond. Around this pond there was a thick growth of alders and willows; the larger trees had thinned out. He saw the glimmer of afternoon sunlight on the water—and then, all at once, he heard life.

There had been few changes in Beaver-tooth’s colony since the days of his feud with Kazan and the otters. Old Beaver-tooth was still older. He was fatter. He slept a great deal, and perhaps he was less cautious. He was dozing on the great mud-and-brushwood dam of which he had been engineer-in-chief, when Baree came out softly on a high bank thirty or forty feet away. So noiseless had Baree been that none of the beavers had seen or heard him. He squatted himself flat on his belly, hidden behind a tuft of grass, and with eager interest watched every movement. Beaver-tooth was rousing himself. He stood on his short legs for a moment; then he tilted himself up on his broad, flat tail like a soldier at attention, and with a sudden whistle dived into the pond with a great splash.

In another moment it seemed to Baree that the pond was alive with beavers. Heads and bodies appeared and disappeared, rushing this way and that through the water in a manner that amazed and puzzled him. It was the colony’s evening frolic. Tails hit the water like flat boards. Odd whistlings rose above the splashing—and then as suddenly as it had begun, the play came to an end. There were probably twenty beavers, not counting the young, and as if guided by a common signal—something which Baree had not heard—they became so quiet that hardly a sound could be heard in the pond. A few of them sank under the water and disappeared entirely, but most of them Baree could watch as they drew themselves out on shore.

The beavers lost no time in getting at their labour, and Baree watched and listened without so much as rustling a blade of the grass in which he was concealed. He was trying to understand. He was striving to place these curious and comfortable-looking creatures in his knowledge of things. They did not alarm him; he felt no uneasiness at their number or size. His stillness was not the quiet of discretion, but rather of a strange and growing desire to get better acquainted with this curious four-legged brotherhood of the pond. Already they had begun to make the big forest less lonely for him. And then, close under him—not more than ten feet from where he lay—he saw something that almost gave voice to the puppyish longing for companionship that was in him.

Down there, on a clean strip of the shore that rose out of the soft mud of the pond, waddled fat little Umisk and three of his playmates. Umisk was just about Baree’s age, perhaps a week or two younger. But he was fully as heavy, and almost as wide as he was long. Nature can produce no four-footed creature that is more lovable than a baby beaver, unless it is a baby bear; and Umisk would have taken first prize at any beaver baby-show in the world. His three companions were a bit smaller. They came waddling from behind a low willow, making queer little chuckling noises, their little flat tails dragging like tiny sledges behind them. They were fat and furry, and mighty friendly looking to Baree, and his heart beat a sudden swiftpit-a-patof joy.

But Baree did not move. He scarcely breathed. And then, suddenly, Umisk turned on one of his playmates and bowled him over. Instantly the other two were on Umisk, and the four little beavers rolled over and over, kicking with their short feet and spatting with their tails, and all the time emitting soft little squeaking cries. Baree knew that it was not fight but frolic. He rose up on his feet. He forgot where he was—forgot everything in the world but those playing, furry balls. For the moment all the hard training nature had been giving him was lost. He was no longer a fighter, no longer a hunter, no longer a seeker after food. He was a puppy, and in him there rose a desire that was greater than hunger. He wanted to go down there with Umisk and his little chums and roll and play. He wanted to tell them, if such a thing were possible, that he had lost his mother and his home, and that he had been having a mighty hard time of it, and that he would like to stay with them and their mothers and fathers if they didn’t care.

In his throat there came the least bit of a whine. It was so low that Umisk and his playmates did not hear it. They were tremendously busy.

Softly Baree took his first step toward them, and then another—and at last he stood on the narrow strip of shore within half a dozen feet of them. His sharp little ears were pitched forward, and he was wiggling his tail as fast as he could, and every muscle in his body was trembling in anticipation.

It was then that Umisk saw him, and his fat little body became suddenly as motionless as a stone.

“Hello!” said Baree, wiggling his whole body and talking as plainly as a human tongue could talk. “Do you care if I play with you?”

Umisk made no response. His three playmates now had their eyes on Baree. They didn’t make a move. They looked stunned. Four pairs of staring, wondering eyes were fixed on the stranger.

Baree made another effort. He grovelled on his fore-legs, while his tail and hind-legs continued to wiggle, and with a sniff he grabbed a bit of stick between his teeth.

“Come on—let me in,” he urged. “I know how to play!”

He tossed the stick in the air as if to prove what he was saying, and gave a little yap.

Umisk and his brothers were like dummies.

And then, of a sudden, some one saw Baree. It was a big beaver swimming down the pond with a sapling timber for the new dam that was under way. Instantly he loosed his hold and faced the shore. And then, like the report of a rifle, there came the crack of his big flat tail on the water—the beaver’s signal of danger that on a quiet night can be heard half a mile away.

“Danger,” it warned. “Danger—danger—danger!”

Scarcely had the signal gone forth when tails were cracking in all directions—in the pond, in the hidden canals, in the thick willows and alders. To Umisk and his companions they said:

“Run for your lives!”

Baree stood rigid and motionless now. In amazement he watched the four little beavers plunge into the pond and disappear. He heard the sounds of other and heavier bodies striking the water. And then there followed a strange and disquieting silence. Softly Baree whined, and his whine was almost a sobbing cry. Why had Umisk and his little mates run away from him? What had he done that they didn’t want to make friends with him? A great loneliness swept over him—a loneliness greater even than that of his first night away from his mother. The last of the sun faded out of the sky as he stood there. Darker shadows crept over the pond. He looked into the forest, where night was gathering—and with another whining cry he slunk back into it. He had not found friendship. He had not found comradeship. And his heart was very sad.

CHAPTER VII

For two or three days Baree’s excursions after food took him farther and farther away from the pond. But each afternoon he returned to it—until the third day, when he discovered a new creek, and Wakayoo. The creek was fully two miles back in the forest. This was a different sort of stream. It sang merrily over a gravelly bed and between chasm walls of split rock. It formed deep pools and foaming eddies, and where Baree first struck it, the air trembled with the distant thunder of a waterfall. It was much pleasanter than the dark and silent beaver-stream. It seemed possessed of life, and the rush and tumult of it—the song and thunder of the water—gave to Baree entirely new sensations. He made his way along it slowly and cautiously, and it was because of this slowness and caution that he came suddenly and unobserved upon Wakayoo, the big black bear, hard at work fishing.

Wakayoo stood knee-deep in a pool that had formed behind a sand bar, and he was having tremendously good luck. Even as Baree shrank back, his eyes popping at sight of this monster he had seen but once before, in the gloom of night, one of Wakayoo’s big paws sent a great splash of water high in the air, and a fish landed on the pebbly shore. A little while before, the suckers had run up the creek in thousands to spawn, and the rapid lowering of the water had caught many of them in these prison-pools. Wakayoo’s fat, sleek body was evidence of the prosperity this circumstance had brought him. Although it was a little past the “prime” season for bearskins, Wakayoo’s coat was splendidly thick and black.

For a quarter of an hour Baree watched him while he knocked fish out of the pool. When at last he stopped, there were twenty or thirty fish among the stones, some of them dead and others still flopping. From where he lay flattened out between two rocks, Baree could hear the crunching of flesh and bone as the bear devoured his dinner. It sounded good, and the fresh smell of fish filled him with a craving that had never been roused by crawfish or even partridge.

In spite of his fat and his size, Wakayoo was not a glutton, and after he had eaten his fourth fish he pawed all the others together in a pile, partly covered them by raking up sand and stones with his long claws, and finished his work of caching by breaking down a small balsam sapling so that the fish were entirely concealed. Then he lumbered slowly away in the direction of the rumbling waterfall.

Twenty seconds after the last of Wakayoo had disappeared in a turn of the creek, Baree was under the broken balsam. He dragged out a fish that was still alive. He ate the whole of it, and it was delicious.

Baree now found that Wakayoo had solved the food problem for him, and this day he did not return to the beaver pond, nor the next. The big bear was incessantly fishing up and down the creek, and day after day Baree continued his feasts. It was not difficult for him to find Wakayoo’s caches. All he had to do was to follow along the shore of the stream, sniffing carefully. Some of the caches were getting old, and their perfume was anything but pleasant to Baree. These he avoided—but he never missed a meal or two out of a fresh one.

For a week life continued to be exceedingly pleasant. And then came the break—the change that was destined to mean as much for Baree as that other day, long ago, had meant for Kazan, his father, when he killed the man-brute in the edge of the wilderness.

This change came on the day when, in trotting around a great rock near the waterfall, Baree found himself face to face with Pierrot the hunter and Nepeese, the star-eyed girl who had shot him in the edge of the clearing.

It was Nepeese whom he saw first. If it had been Pierrot, he would have turned back quickly. But again the blood of his forbear was rousing strange tremblings within him. Was it like this that the first woman had looked to Kazan?

Baree stood still. Nepeese was not more than twenty feet from him. She sat on a rock, full in the early morning sun, and was brushing out her wonderful hair. Her lips parted. Her eyes shone in an instant like stars. One hand remained poised, weighted with the jet tresses. She recognized him. She saw the white star on his breast and the white tip on his ear, and under her breath she whispered “Uchi moosis!”—“The dog-pup!” It was the wild-dog she had shot—and thought had died!

The evening before Pierrot and Nepeese had built a shelter of balsams behind the big rock, and on a small white plot of sand Pierrot was kneeling over a fire preparing breakfast while the Willow arranged her hair. He raised his head to speak to her, and saw Baree. In that instant the spell was broken. Baree saw the man-beast as he rose to his feet. Like a shot he was gone.

Scarcely swifter was he than Nepeese.

“Dépêchez vous, mon père!” she cried. “It is the dog-pup! Quick——”

In the floating cloud of her hair she sped after Baree like the wind. Pierrot followed, and in going he caught up his rifle. It was difficult for him to catch up with the Willow. She was like a wild spirit, her little moccasined feet scarcely touching the sand as she ran up the long bar. It was wonderful to see the lithe swiftness of her, and that wonderful hair streaming out in the sun. Even now, in this moment’s excitement, it made Pierrot think of McTaggart, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s factor over at Lac Bain, and what he had said yesterday. Half the night Pierrot had lain awake, gritting his teeth at thought of it; and this morning, before Baree ran upon them, he had looked at Nepeese more closely than ever before in his life. She was beautiful. She was lovelier even than Wyola, her princess mother, who was dead. That hair—which made men stare as if they could not believe! Those eyes—like pools filled with wonderful starlight! Her slimness, that was like a flower! And McTaggart had said——

Floating back to him there came an excited cry.

“Hurry, Nootawe! He has turned into the blind cañon. He cannot escape us now.”

She was panting when he came up to her. The French blood in her glowed a vivid crimson in her cheeks and lips. Her white teeth gleamed like milk.

“In there!” And she pointed.

They went in.

Ahead of them Baree was running for his life. He sensed instinctively the fact that these wonderful two-legged beings he had looked upon were all-powerful. And they were after him! He could hear them. Nepeese was following almost as swiftly as he could run. Suddenly he turned into a cleft between two great rocks. Twenty feet in, his way was barred, and he ran back. When he darted out, straight up the cañon, Nepeese was not a dozen yards behind him, and he saw Pierrot almost at her side. The Willow gave a cry.

“Mana—mana—there he is!”

She caught her breath, and darted into a copse of young balsams where Baree had disappeared. Like a great entangling web her loose hair impeded her in the brush, and with an encouraging cry to Pierrot she stopped to gather it over her shoulder as he ran past her. She lost only a moment or two, and was after him. Fifty yards ahead of her Pierrot gave a warning shout. Baree had turned. Almost in the same breath he was tearing over his back-trail, directly toward the Willow. He did not see her in time to stop or swerve aside, and Nepeese flung herself down in his path. For an instant or two they were together. Baree felt the smother of her hair, and the clutch of her hands. Then he squirmed away and darted again toward the blind end of the cañon.

Nepeese sprang to her feet. She was panting—and laughing. Pierrot came back wildly, and the Willow pointed beyond him.

“I had him—and he didn’t bite!” she said, breathing swiftly. She still pointed to the end of the cañon, and she said again: “I had him—and he didn’t bite me, Nootawe!”

That was the wonder of it. She had been reckless—and Baree had not bitten her! It was then, with her eyes shining at Pierrot, and the smile fading slowly from her lips, that she spoke softly the word “Baree,” which in her tongue meant “the wild dog”—a little brother of the wolf.

“Come,” cried Pierrot, “or we will lose him!”

Pierrot was confident. The cañon had narrowed. Baree could not get past them unseen. Three minutes later Baree came to the blind end of the cañon—a wall of rock that rose straight up like the curve of a dish. Feasting on fish and long hours of sleep had fattened him, and he was half winded as he sought vainly for an exit. He was at the far end of the dishlike curve of rock, without a bush or a clump of grass to hide him, when Pierrot and Nepeese saw him again. Nepeese made straight toward him. Pierrot, foreseeing what Baree would do, hurried to the left, at right-angles to the end of the cañon.

In and out among the rocks Baree sought swiftly for a way of escape. In a moment more he had come to the “box,” or cup of the cañon. This was a break in the wall, fifty or sixty feet wide, which opened into a natural prison about an acre in extent. It was a beautiful spot. On all sides but that leading into the coulée it was shut in by walls of rock. At the far end a waterfall broke down in a series of rippling cascades. The grass was thick underfoot and strewn with flowers. In this trap Pierrot had got more than one fine haunch of venison. From it there was no escape, except in the face of his rifle. He called to Nepeese as he saw Baree entering it, and together they climbed the slope.

Baree had almost reached the edge of the little prison-meadow when suddenly he stopped himself so quickly that he fell back on his haunches, and his heart jumped up into his throat.

Full in his path stood Wakayoo, the huge black bear!

For perhaps a half-minute Baree hesitated between the two perils. He heard the voices of Nepeese and Pierrot. He caught the rattle of stones under their feet. And he was filled with a great dread. Then he looked at Wakayoo. The big bear had not moved an inch. He, too, was listening. But to him there was a thing more disturbing than the sounds he heard. It was the scent which he caught in the air—the man-scent.

Baree, watching him, saw his head swing slowly even as the footsteps of Nepeese and Pierrot became more and more distinct. It was the first time Baree had ever stood face to face with the big bear. He had watched him fish; he had fattened on Wakayoo’s prowess; he had held him in splendid awe. Now there was something about the bear that took away his fear and gave him in its place a new and thrilling confidence. Wakayoo, big and powerful as he was, would not run from the two-legged creatures who pursued him! If Baree could only get past Wakayoo he was safe!

Baree darted to one side and ran for the open meadow. Wakayoo did not stir as Baree sped past him—no more than if he had been a bird or a rabbit. Then came another breath of air, heavy with the scent of man. This, at last, put life into him. He turned and began lumbering after Baree into the meadow-trap. Baree, looking back, saw him coming—and thought it was pursuit. Nepeese and Pierrot came over the slope, and at the same instant they saw both Wakayoo and Baree.

Where they entered into the grassy dip under the rock walls, Baree turned sharply to the right. Here was a great boulder, one end of it tilted up off the earth. It looked like a splendid hiding-place, and Baree crawled under it.

But Wakayoo kept straight ahead into the meadow.

From where he lay Baree could see what happened. Scarcely had he crawled under the rock when Nepeese and Pierrot appeared through the break in the dip, and stopped. The fact that they stopped thrilled Baree. They were afraid of Wakayoo! The big bear was two thirds of the way across the meadow. The sun fell on him, so that his coat shone like black satin. Pierrot stared at him for a moment. Pierrot did not kill for the love of killing. Necessity made him a conservationist. But he saw that in spite of the lateness of the season, Wakayoo’s coat was splendid—and he raised his rifle.

Baree saw this action. He saw, a moment later, something spit from the end of the gun, and then he heard that deafening crash that had come with his own hurt, when the Willow’s bullet had burned through his flesh. He turned his eyes swiftly to Wakayoo. The big bear had stumbled; he was on his knees; and then he struggled up and lumbered on.

The roar of the rifle came again, and a second time Wakayoo went down. Pierrot could not miss at that distance. Wakayoo made a splendid mark. It was slaughter; yet for Pierrot and Nepeese it was business—the business of life.

Baree was shivering. It was more from excitement than fear, for he had lost his own fear in the tragedy of these moments. A low whine rose in his throat as he looked at Wakayoo, who had risen again and faced his enemies—his jaws gaping, his head swinging slowly, his legs weakening under him as the blood poured through his torn lungs. Baree whined—because Wakayoo had fished for him, because he had come to look on him as a friend, and because he knew it was death that Wakayoo was facing now. There was a third shot—the last. Wakayoo sank down in his tracks. His big head dropped between his forepaws. A racking cough or two came to Baree. And then there was silence.

It was slaughter—but business.

A minute later, standing over Wakayoo, Pierrot said to Nepeese:

“Mon Dieu, but it is a fine skin,Sakahet!It is worth twenty dollars over at Lac Bain!”

He drew forth his knife and began whetting if on a stone which he carried in his pocket. In these minutes Baree might have crawled out from under his rock and escaped down the cañon; for a space he was forgotten. Then Nepeese thought of him, and in that same strange, wondering voice she spoke again the word “Baree.”

Pierrot, who was kneeling, looked up at her.

“Oui, Sakahet.He was born of the wild. And now he is gone——”

The Willow shook her head.

“Non, he is not gone,” she said, and her dark eyes quested the sunlit meadow.

Baree stood still. Nepeese was not more than twenty feet from him. He sat on a rock, full in the early morning sun. She saw the white star on his breast and the white tip on his ear, and under her breath she whispered “Uchi moosis!”—“The dog-pup!” It was the wild-dog she had shot—and thought had died!

CHAPTER VIII

As Nepeese gazed about the rock-walled end of the cañon, the prison into which they had driven Wakayoo and Baree, Pierrot looked up again from his skinning of the big black bear, and he muttered something that no one but himself could have heard. “Non, it is not possible,” he had said a moment before; but to Nepeese it was possible—the thought that was in her mind. It was a wonderful thought. It thrilled her to the depth of her wild, beautiful soul. It sent a glow into her eyes and a deeper flush of excitement into her cheeks and lips.

As she quested the ragged edges of the little meadow for signs of the dog-pup, her thoughts flashed back swiftly. Two years ago they had buried her princess mother under the tall spruce near their cabin. That day Pierrot’s sun had set for all time, and her own life was filled with a vast loneliness. There had been three at the graveside that afternoon as the sun went down—Pierrot, herself, and a dog, a great, powerful husky with a white star on his breast and a white-tipped ear. He had been her dead mother’s pet from puppyhood—her bodyguard, with her always, even with his head resting on the side of her bed as she died. And that night, the night of the day they buried her, the dog had disappeared. He had gone as quietly and as completely as her spirit. No one ever saw him after that. It was strange, and to Pierrot it was a miracle. Deep in his heart he was filled with the wonderful conviction that the dog had gone with his beloved Wyola into heaven.

But Nepeese had spent three winters at the Missioner’s school at Nelson House. She had learned a great deal about white people and the real God, and she knew that Pierrot’s thought was impossible. She believed that her mother’s husky was either dead or had joined the wolves. Probably he had gone to the wolves. So—was it not possible that this youngster she and her father had pursued was of the flesh and blood of her mother’s pet? It was more than possible. The white star on his breast, the white-tipped ear—the fact that he had not bitten her when he might easily have buried his fangs in the soft flesh of her arms! She was convinced. While Pierrot skinned the bear, she began hunting for Baree.

Baree had not moved an inch from under his rock. He lay like a thing stunned, his eyes fixed steadily on the scene of the tragedy out in the meadow. He had seen something that he would never forget—even as he would never quite forget his mother and Kazan and the old windfall. He had witnessed the death of the creature he had thought all-powerful. Wakayoo, the big bear, had not even put up a fight. Pierrot and Nepeese had killed himwithout touching him; now Pierrot was cutting him with a knife which shot silvery flashes in the sun; and Wakayoo made no movement. It made Baree shiver, and he drew himself an inch farther back under the rock, where he was already wedged as if he had been shoved there by a strong hand.

He could see Nepeese. She came straight back to the break through which his flight had taken him, and stood at last not more than twenty feet from where he was hidden. Now that she stood where he could not escape, she began weaving her shining hair into two thick braids. Baree had taken his eyes from Pierrot, and he watched her curiously. He was not afraid now. His nerves tingled. In him a strange and growing force was struggling to solve a great mystery—the reason for his desire to creep out from under his rock and approach that wonderful creature with the shining eyes and the beautiful hair.

Baree wanted to approach. It was like an invisible string tugging at his very heart. It was Kazan, and not Gray Wolf, calling to him back through the centuries, a “call” that was as old as the Egyptian pyramids and perhaps ten thousand years older. But against that desire Gray Wolf was pulling from out the black ages of the forests. The wolf held him quiet and motionless. Nepeese was looking about her. She was smiling. For a moment her face was turned toward him, and he saw the white shine of her teeth, and her beautiful eyes seemed glowing straight at him.

And then, suddenly, she dropped on her knees and peered under the rock.

Their eyes met. For at least half a minute there was not a sound. Nepeese did not move, and her breath came so softly that Baree could not hear it. Then she said, almost in a whisper:

“Baree! Baree! Upi Baree!”

It was the first time Baree had heard his name, and there was something so soft and assuring in the sound of it that in spite of himself the dog in him responded to it in a whimper that just reached the Willow’s ears. Slowly she stretched in an arm. It was bare and round and soft. He might have darted forward the length of his body and buried his fangs in it easily. But something held him back. He knew that it was not an enemy; he knew that the dark eyes shining at him so wonderfully were not filled with the desire to harm—and the voice that came to him softly was like a strange and thrilling music.

“Baree! Baree! Upi Baree!”

Over and over again the Willow called to him like that, while on her face she tried to draw herself a few inches farther under the rock. She could not reach him. There was still a foot between her hand and Baree, and she could not wedge herself in an inch more. And then she saw where on the other side of the rock there was a hollow, shut in by a stone. If she had removed the stone, and come in that way——

She drew herself out and stood once more in the sunshine. Her heart thrilled. Pierrot was busy over his bear—and she would not call him. She made an effort to move the stone which closed in the hollow under the big boulder, but it was wedged in tightly. Then she began digging with a stick. If Pierrot had been there, his sharp eyes would have discovered the significance of that stone, which was not larger than a water pail. Possibly for centuries it had lain there, its support keeping the huge rock from toppling down, just as an ounce-weight may swing the balance of a wheel that weighs a ton.

Five minutes—and Nepeese could move the stone. She tugged at it. Inch by inch she dragged it out until at last it lay at her feet and the opening was ready for her body. She looked again toward Pierrot. He was still busy, and she laughed softly as she untied a big red-and-white Bay handkerchief from about her shoulders. With this she would secure Baree. She dropped on her hands and knees and then lowered herself flat on the ground and began crawling into the hollow under the boulder.

Baree had moved. With the back of his head flattened against the rock, he had heard something which Nepeese had not heard; he had felt a slow and growing pressure, and from this pressure he had dragged himself slowly—and the pressure still followed. The mass of rock was settling! Nepeese did not see or hear or understand. She was calling to him more and more pleadingly:

“Baree—Baree—Baree——”

Her head and shoulders and both arms were under the rock now. The glow of her eyes was very close to Baree. He whined. The thrill of a great and impending danger stirred in his blood. And then——

In that moment Nepeese felt the pressure of the rock on her shoulder, and into the eyes that had been glowing softly at Baree there shot a sudden wild look of horror. And then there came from her lips a cry that was not like any other sound Baree had ever heard in the wilderness—wild, piercing, filled with agonized fear. Pierrot did not hear that first cry. But he heard the second and the third—and then scream after scream as the Willow’s tender body was slowly crushed under the settling mass. He ran toward it with the speed of the wind. The cries were weaker—dying away. He saw Baree as he came out from under the rock and ran into the cañon, and in the same instant he saw a part of the Willow’s dress and her moccasined feet. The rest of her was hidden under the death-trap. Like a madman Pierrot began digging. When a few moments later he drew Nepeese out from under the boulder she was white and deathly still. Her eyes were closed. His hand could not feel that she was living, and a great moan of anguish rose out of his soul. But he knew how to fight for a life. He tore open her dress and found that she was not crushed as he had feared. Then he ran for water. When he returned, the Willow’s eyes were open and she was gasping for breath.

“The blessed saints be praised!” sobbed Pierrot, falling on his knees at her side. “Nepeese, ma Nepeese!”

She smiled at him, with her two hands on her bare breast, and Pierrot hugged her up to him, forgetting the water he had run so hard to get.

Still later, when he got down on his knees and peered under the rock, his face turned white and he said:

“Mon Dieu, if it had not been for that little hollow in the earth, Nepeese——”

He shuddered, and said no more. But Nepeese, happy in her salvation, made a movement with her hand and said, smiling at him:

“I would have been like—that. Ah,mon père, I hope I shall never have a lover like that rock!”

Pierrot’s face darkened as he bent over her.

“Non!” he said fiercely. “Never!”

He was thinking again of McTaggart, the factor at Lac Bain, and his hands clenched while his lips softly touched the Willow’s hair.

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