When Baree joined the pack, a maddened, mouth-frothing, snarling horde, Napamoos, the young caribou bull, was well out in the river and swimming steadily for the opposite shore.
When Baree joined the pack, a maddened, mouth-frothing, snarling horde, Napamoos, the young caribou bull, was well out in the river and swimming steadily for the opposite shore.
When Baree joined the pack, a maddened, mouth-frothing, snarling horde, Napamoos, the young caribou bull, was well out in the river and swimming steadily for the opposite shore.
It was then that Baree found himself at the side of Maheegun. She was panting; her red tongue hung from her open jaws; but at his presence she brought her fangs together with a snap and slunk from him into the heart of the wind-run and disappointed pack. The wolves were in an ugly temper, but Baree did not sense the fact. Nepeese had trained him to take to water like an otter, and he did not understand why this narrow river should stop them as it had. He ran down to the water and stood belly deep in it, facing for an instant the horde of savage beasts above him, wondering why they did not follow. And he was black—black. He came among them again, and for the first time they noticed him.
The restless movements of the waters ceased now. A new and wondering interest held them rigid. Fangs closed sharply. A little in the open Baree saw Maheegun, with a big gray wolf standing near her. He went to her again, and this time she remained with flattened ears until he was sniffing her neck. And then, with a vicious snarl, she snapped at him. Her teeth sank deep in the soft flesh of his shoulder, and at the unexpectedness and pain of her attack, he let out a yelp. The next instant the big gray wolf was at him.
Again caught unexpectedly, Baree went down with the wolf’s fangs at his throat. But in him was the blood of Kazan, the flesh and bone and sinew of Kazan, and for the first time in his life he fought as Kazan fought on that terrible day at the top of the Sun Rock. He was young; he had yet to learn the cleverness and the strategy of the veteran; but his jaws were like the iron clamps with which Pierrot set his bear traps, and in his heart was sudden and blinding rage, a desire to kill that rose above all sense of pain or fear.
That fight, if it had been fair, would have been a victory for Baree, even in his youth and inexperience. In fairness the pack should have waited; it was a law of the pack to wait—until one was done for. But Baree was black; he was a stranger, an interloper, a creature whom they noticed now in a moment when their blood was hot with the rage and disappointment of killers who had missed their prey. A second wolf sprang in, striking Baree treacherously from the flank; and while he was in the snow, his jaws crushing the fore-leg of his first foe, the pack was on himen masse.
Such an attack on the young caribou bull would have meant death in less than a minute. Every fang would have found its hold. Baree, by the fortunate circumstance that he was under his first two assailants and protected by their bodies, was saved from being torn instantly into pieces. He knew that he was fighting for his life. Over him the horde of beasts rolled and twisted and snarled; he felt the burning pain of teeth sinking into his flesh; he was smothered; a hundred knives seemed cutting him into pieces; yet no sound—not a whimper or a cry—came from him now in the horror and hopelessness of it all.
It would have ended in another half-minute had the struggle not been at the very edge of the bank. Undermined by the erosion of the spring floods, a section of this bank suddenly gave way, and with it went Baree and half the pack. In a flash Baree thought of the water and the escaping caribou. For a bare instant the cave-in had sent him free of the pack, and in that space he gave a single leap over the gray backs of his enemies into the deep water of the stream. Close behind him half a dozen jaws snapped shut on empty air. As it had saved the caribou, so this strip of water shimmering in the glow of the moon and stars had saved Baree.
The stream was not more than a hundred feet in width, but it cost Baree close to a losing struggle to get across it. Until he dragged himself out on the opposite shore, the extent of his injuries was not impressed upon him fully. One hind leg, for the time, was useless; his forward left shoulder was laid open to the bone; his head and body were torn and cut; and as he dragged himself slowly away from the stream, the trail he left in the snow was a red path of blood. It trickled from his panting jaws, between which his tongue was bleeding; it ran down his legs and flanks and belly, and it dripped from his ears, one of which was slit clean for two inches as though cut with a knife. His instincts were dazed, his perception of things clouded as if by a veil drawn close over his eyes. He did not hear, a few minutes later, the howling of the disappointed wolf-horde on the other side of the river, and he no longer sensed the existence of moon or stars. Half dead, he dragged himself on until by chance he came to a clump of dwarf spruce. Into this he struggled, and then he dropped exhausted.
All that night and until noon the next day Baree lay without moving. The fever burned in his blood; it flamed high and swift toward death; then it ebbed slowly, and life conquered. At noon he came forth. He was weak, and he wobbled on his legs. His hind leg still dragged, and he was racked with pain. But it was a splendid day. The sun was warm; the snow was thawing; the sky was like a great blue sea; and the floods of life coursed warmly again through Baree’s veins. But now, for all time, his desires were changed, and his great quest at an end.
A red ferocity grew in Baree’s eyes as he snarled in the direction of last night’s fight with the wolves. They were no longer his people. They were no longer of his blood. Never again could the hunt-call lure him or the voice of the pack rouse the old longing. In him there was a thing new-born, an undying hatred for the wolf, a hatred that was to grow in him until it became like a disease in his vitals, a thing ever present and insistent, demanding vengeance on their kind. Last night he had gone to them a comrade. To-day he was an outcast. Cut and maimed, bearing with him scars for all time, he had learned his lesson of the wilderness. To-morrow, and the next day, and for days after that without number, he would remember the lesson well.
CHAPTER XIX
At the cabin on the Gray Loon, on the fourth night of Baree’s absence, Pierrot was smoking his pipe after a great supper of caribou tenderloin he had brought in from the trail, and Nepeese was listening to his tale of the remarkable shot he had made, when a sound at the door interrupted them. Nepeese opened it, and Baree came in. The cry of welcome that was on the girl’s lips died there instantly, and Pierrot stared as if he could not quite believe this creature that had returned was the wolf-dog. Three days and nights of hunger in which he could not hunt because of the leg that dragged had put on him the marks of starvation. Battle-scarred and covered with dried blood-clots that still clung tenaciously to his long hair, he was a sight that drew at last a long breath from Nepeese. A queer smile was growing in Pierrot’s face as he leaned forward in his chair; and then slowly rising to his feet, and looking closer, he said to Nepeese:
“Ventre Saint Gris! Oui, he has been to the pack, Nepeese, and the pack turned on him. It was not a two-wolf fight—non!It was the pack. He is cut and torn in fifty places. And—mon Dieu, he is alive!”
In Pierrot’s voice there was growing wonder and amazement. He was incredulous, and yet he could not disbelieve what his eyes told him. What had happened was nothing short of a miracle, and for a time he uttered not a word more but remained staring in silence while Nepeese woke from her astonishment to give Baree doctoring and food. After he had eaten ravenously of cold boiled mush she began bathing his wounds in warm water, and after that she soothed them with bear-grease, talking to him all the time in her soft Cree. After the pain and hunger and treachery of his adventure, it was a wonderful homecoming for Baree. He slept that night at the foot of the Willow’s bed. The next morning it was the cool caress of his tongue on her hand that awakened her.
With this day they resumed the comradeship interrupted by Baree’s temporary desertion. The attachment was greater than ever on Baree’s part. It was he who had run away from the Willow, who had deserted her at the call of the pack, and it seemed at times as though he sensed the depths of his perfidy and was striving to make amends. There was indubitably a very great change in him. He hung to Nepeese like a shadow. Instead of sleeping at night in the spruce shelter Pierrot made for him, he made himself a little hollow in the earth close to the cabin door. Pierrot thought that he understood, and Nepeese thought that she understood still more; but in reality the key to the mystery remained with Baree himself. He no longer played as he had played before he went off alone into the forest. He did not chase sticks, or run until he was winded, for the pure joy of running. His puppyishness was gone. In its place was a great worship and a rankling bitterness, a love for the girl and a hatred for the pack and all that it stood for. Whenever he heard the wolf-howl, it brought an angry snarl into his throat, and he would bare his fangs until even Pierrot would draw a little away from him. But a touch of the girl’s hand would quiet him.
In a week or two the heavier snows came, and Pierrot began making his trips over the trap-lines. Nepeese had entered into a thrilling bargain with him this winter. Pierrot had taken her into partnership. Every fifth trap, every fifth deadfall, and every fifth poison-bait was to be her own, and what they caught or killed was to bring a bit nearer to realization a wonderful dream that was growing in the Willow’s soul. Pierrot had promised. If they had great luck that winter, they would go down together on the last snows to Nelson House and buy the little old organ that was for sale there; and if the organ was sold, they would work another winter, and get a new one.
This plan gave Nepeese an enthusiastic and tireless interest in the trap-line. With Pierrot it was more or less a fine bit of strategy. He would have sold his hand to give Nepeese the organ; he was determined that she should have it, whether the fifth traps and the fifth deadfalls and the fifth poison-baits caught the fur or not. The partnership meant nothing so far as that was concerned. But in another way it meant to Nepeese a business interest, the thrill of personal achievement. Pierrot impressed on her that it made a comrade and co-worker of her on the trail. That was his scheme: to keep her with him when he was away from the cabin. He knew that Bush McTaggart would come again to the Gray Loon, probably more than once during the winter. He had swift dogs, and it was a short journey. And when McTaggart came, Nepeese must not be at the cabin—alone.
Pierrot’s trap-line swung into the north and west, covering in all a matter of fifty miles, with an average of two traps, one deadfall, and a poison-bait to each mile. It was a twisting line blazed along streams for mink, otter, and marten, piercing the deepest forests for fisher-cat and lynx and crossing lakes and storm-swept strips of barrens where poison-baits could be set for fox and wolf. Halfway over this line Pierrot had built a small log cabin, and at the end of it another, so that a day’s work meant twenty-five miles. This was easy for Pierrot, and not hard on Nepeese after the first few days.
All through October and November they made the trips regularly, making the round every six days, which gave one day of rest at the cabin on the Gray Loon and another day in the cabin at the end of the trail. To Pierrot the winter’s work was business, the labour of his people for many generations back; to Nepeese and Baree it was a wild and joyous adventure that never for a day grew tiresome. Even Pierrot could not quite immunize himself against their enthusiasm. It was infectious, and he was happier than he had been since his sun had set that evening the princess mother died.
They were splendid months. Fur was thick, and it was steadily cold without bad storm. Nepeese not only carried a small pack on her shoulders in order that Pierrot’s load might be lighter, but she trained Baree to bear tiny shoulder-panniers which she manufactured. In these panniers Baree carried the bait. In at least a third of the total number of traps set there was always what Pierrot called trash—rabbits, owls, whisky-jacks, jays, and squirrels. These, with the skin or feathers stripped off, made up the bulk of the bait for the traps ahead.
One afternoon early in December, as they were returning to the Gray Loon, Pierrot stopped suddenly a dozen paces ahead of Nepeese and stared at the snow. A strange snowshoe trail had joined their own and was heading toward the cabin. For half a minute Pierrot was silent and scarcely moved a muscle as he stared. The trail came straight out of the north—and off there was Lac Bain. Also they were the marks of large snowshoes, and the stride indicated was that of a tall man. Before Pierrot had spoken, Nepeese had guessed what they meant.
“M’sieu the Factor from Lac Bain!” she said.
Baree was sniffing suspiciously at the strange trail. They heard the low growl in his throat, and Pierrot’s shoulders stiffened.
“Yes, the M’sieu,” he said.
The Willow’s heart beat more swiftly as they went on. She was not afraid of McTaggart, not physically afraid; and yet something rose up in her breast and choked her at thought of his presence on the Gray Loon. Why was he there? It was not necessary for Pierrot to answer the question, even had she given voice to it. She knew. The Factor from Lac Bain had no business there—except to see her. The blood burned red in her cheeks as she thought again of that minute on the edge of the chasm when he had almost crushed her in his arms. Would he trythatagain?
Pierrot, deep in his own sombre thoughts, scarcely heard the strange laugh that came suddenly from her lips. Nepeese was listening to the growl that was again in Baree’s throat. It was a low but terrible sound. When half a mile from the cabin, she unslung the panniers from his shoulders and carried them herself. Ten minutes later they saw a man advancing to meet them.
It was not McTaggart. Pierrot recognized him, and with an audible breath of relief waved his hand. It was DeBar, who trapped in the Barren Country north of Lac Bain. Pierrot knew him well. They had exchanged fox-poison. They were friends, and there was pleasure in the grip of their hands. DeBar stared then at Nepeese.
“Tonnerre, she has grown into a woman!” he cried, and like a woman Nepeese looked at him straight with the colour deepening in her cheeks, as he bowed low with a courtesy that dated back a couple of centuries beyond the trap-line.
DeBar lost no time in explaining his mission, and before they reached the cabin Pierrot and Nepeese knew why he had come. M’sieu, the Factor at Lac Bain, was leaving on a journey in five days, and he had sent DeBar as a special messenger to request Pierrot to come up to assist the clerk and the halfbreed storekeeper in his absence. Pierrot made no comment at first. But he was thinking. Why had Bush McTaggart sent forhim? Why had he not chosen some one nearer? Not until a fire was crackling in the sheet-iron stove in the cabin, and Nepeese was busily engaged getting supper, did he voice these questions to the fox-hunter.
DeBar shrugged his shoulders.
“He asked me, at first, if I could stay. But I have a wife with a bad lung, Pierrot. It was caught by frost last winter, and I dare not leave her long alone. He has great faith in you. Besides, you know all the trappers on the Company’s books at Lac Bain. So he sent for you, and begs you not to worry about your fur-lines, as he will pay you double what you would catch in the time you are at the Post.”
“And—Nepeese?” said Pierrot. “M’sieu expects me to bring her?”
From the stove the Willow bent her head to listen, and her heart leaped free again at DeBar’s answer.
“He said nothing about that. But surely—it will be a great change for li’le m’selle.”
Pierrot nodded.
“Possibly,Netootam.”
They discussed the matter no more that night. But for hours Pierrot was still, thinking, and a hundred times he asked himself that same question: Why had McTaggart sent forhim? He was not the only man well known to the trappers on the Company’s books. There was Wassoon, for instance, the halfbreed Scandinavian whose cabin was less than four hours’ journey from the post—or Baroche, the white-bearded old Frenchman who lived yet nearer and whose word was as good as the Bible. It must be, he told himself finally, that M’sieu had sent forhimbecause he wanted to win over the father of Nepeese and gain the friendship of Nepeese herself. For this was undoubtedly a very great honour that the Factor was conferring on him. And yet, deep down in his heart, he was filled with suspicion.
When DeBar was about to leave the next morning, Pierrot said:
“Tell M’sieu that I will leave for Lac Bain the day after to-morrow.”
After DeBar had gone, he said to Nepeese:
“And you shall remain here,ma chérie. I will not take you to Lac Bain. I have had a dream that M’sieu will not go on a journey, but that he has lied, and that he will be sick when I arrive at the post. And yet, if it should happen that you care to go——”
Nepeese straightened suddenly, like a reed that has been caught by the wind.
“Non!” she cried, so fiercely that Pierrot laughed, and rubbed his hands.
So it happened that on the second day after the fox-hunter’s visit Pierrot left for Lac Bain, with Nepeese in the door waving him good-bye until he was out of sight.
On the morning of this same day Bush McTaggart rose from his bed while it was still dark. The time had come. He had hesitated at murder—at the killing of Pierrot; and in his hesitation he had found a better way. There could be no escape for Nepeese.
It was a wonderful scheme, so easy of accomplishment, so inevitable in its outcome. And all the time Pierrot would think he was away to the east on a mission!
He ate his breakfast before dawn, and was on the trail before it was yet light. Purposely he struck due east, so that in coming up from the south and west Pierrot would not strike his sledge tracks. For he had made up his mind now that Pierrot must never know and must never have a suspicion, even though it cost him so many more miles to travel that he would not reach the Gray Loon until the second day. It was better to be a day late, after all, as it was possible that something might have delayed Pierrot. So he made no effort to travel fast.
There was a vast amount of brutal satisfaction to McTaggart in anticipating what was about to happen, and he revelled in it to the full. There was no chance for disappointment. He was positive that Nepeese would not accompany her father to Lac Bain. She would be at the cabin on the Gray Loon—alone.
This aloneness was to Nepeese burdened with no thought of danger. There were times, now, when the thought of being alone was pleasant to her, when she wanted to dream by herself, when she visioned things into the mysteries of which she would not admit even Pierrot. She was growing into womanhood—just the sweet, closed bud of womanhood as yet—still a girl with the soft velvet of girlhood in her eyes, yet with the mystery of woman stirring gently in her soul, as if the Great Hand were hesitating between awakening her and letting her sleep a little longer. At these times, when the opportunity came to steal hours by herself, she would put on the red dress and do up her wonderful hair as she saw it in the pictures of the magazines Pierrot had sent up twice a year from Nelson House.
On the second day of Pierrot’s absence Nepeese dressed herself like this, but to-day she let her hair cascade in a shining glory about her, and about her forehead bound a circlet of red ribbon. She was not yet done. To-day she had marvellous designs. On the wall close to her mirror she had tacked a large page from a woman’s magazine, and on this page was a lovely vision of curls. Fifteen hundred miles north of the sunny California studio in which the picture had been taken, Nepeese, with pouted red lips and puckered forehead, was fighting to master the mystery of the other girl’s curls!
She was looking into her mirror, her face flushed and her eyes aglow in the excitement of the struggle to fashion one of the coveted ringlets from a tress that fell away below her hips, when the door opened behind her, and Bush McTaggart walked in.
CHAPTER XX
The Willow’s back was toward the door when the Factor from Lac Bain entered the cabin, and for a few startled seconds she did not turn. Her first thought was of Pierrot—for some reason he had returned. But even as this thought came to her, she heard in Baree’s throat a snarl that brought her suddenly to her feet, facing the door.
McTaggart had not entered unprepared. He had left his pack, his gun, and his heavy coat outside. He was standing with his back against the door; and at Nepeese—in her wonderful dress and flowing hair—he was staring as if stunned for a space at what he saw. Fate, or accident, was playing against the Willow now. If there had been a spark of slumbering chivalry, of mercy, even, in Bush McTaggart’s soul, it was extinguished by what he saw. Never had Nepeese looked more beautiful, not even on that day when MacDonald the map-maker had taken her picture. The sun, flooding through the window, lighted up her marvellous hair; her flushed face was framed in its lustrous darkness like a tinted cameo. He had dreamed, but he had pictured nothing like this woman who stood before him now, her eyes widening with fear and the flush leaving her face even as he looked at her.
It was not a long interval in which their eyes met in that terrible silence—terrible to the girl. Words were unnecessary. At last she understood—understood what her peril had been that day at the edge of the chasm and in the forest, when fearlessly she had played with the menace that was confronting her now.
A breath that was like a sob broke from her lips.
“M’sieu!” she tried to say. But it was only a gasp—an effort. She seemed choking.
Plainly she heard the click of the iron bolt as it locked the door. McTaggart advanced a step.
Only a single step McTaggart advanced. On the floor Baree had remained like a carven thing. He had not moved. He had not made a sound but that one warning snarl—until McTaggart took the step. And then, like a flash, he was up and in front of Nepeese, every hair of his body on end; and at the fury in his growl McTaggart lunged back against the barred door. A word from Nepeese in that moment, and it would have been over. But an instant was lost—an instant before her cry came. In that moment man’s hand and brain worked swifter than brute understanding; and as Baree launched himself at the Factor’s throat, there came a flash and a deafening explosion almost in the Willow’s eyes.
It was a chance shot, a shot from the hip with McTaggart’s automatic. Baree fell short. He struck the floor with a thud and rolled against the log wall. There was not a kick or a quiver left in his body. McTaggart laughed nervously as he shoved his pistol back in its holster. He knew that only a brain shot could have done that.
With her back against the farther wall, Nepeese was waiting. McTaggart could hear her panting breath. He advanced halfway to her.
“Nepeese, I have come to make you my wife,” he said.
She did not answer. He could see that her breath was choking her. She raised a hand to her throat. He took two more steps, and stopped. He had never seen such eyes.
“I have come to make you my wife, Nepeese. To-morrow you will go on to Nelson House with me and then back to Lac Bain—forever.” He added the last word as an afterthought. “Forever,” he repeated.
He did not mince words. His courage and his determination rose as he saw her body droop a little against the wall. She was powerless. There was no escape. Pierrot was gone. Baree was dead.
He had thought that no living creature could move as swiftly as the Willow when his arms reached out for her. She made no sound as she darted under one of his outstretched arms. He made a lunge, a brutal grab, and his fingers caught a bit of hair. He heard the snap of it as she tore herself free and flew to the door. She had thrown back the bolt when he caught her and his arms closed about her. He dragged her back, and now she cried out—cried out in her despair for Pierrot, for Baree, for some miracle of God that might save her.
And Nepeese fought. She twisted in his arms until she was facing him. She could no longer see. She was smothered in her hair. It covered her face and breast and body, suffocating her, entangling her hands and arms—and still she fought. In the struggle McTaggart stumbled over the body of Baree, and they went down. Nepeese was up fully five seconds ahead of the man. She could have reached the door. But again it was her hair. She paused to fling back the thick masses of it so that she could see, and McTaggart was at the door ahead of her.
He did not lock it again, but stood facing her. His face was scratched and bleeding. He was no longer a man but a devil. Nepeese was broken, panting—a low sobbing came with her breath. She bent down, and picked up a piece of firewood. McTaggart could see that her strength was almost gone.
She clutched the stick as he approached her again. But McTaggart had lost all thought of fear or caution. He sprang upon her like an animal. The stick of firewood fell. And again fate played against the girl. In her terror and hopelessness she had caught up the first stick her hand had touched—a light one. With her last strength she struck at McTaggart with it, and as it fell on his head, he staggered back. But it did not make him lose his hold.
Vainly she was fighting now, not to strike him or to escape, but to get her breath. She tried to cry out again, but this time no sound came from between her gasping lips.
Again he laughed, and as he laughed, he heard the door open. Was it the wind? He turned, still holding her in his arms.
In the open door stood Pierrot.
CHAPTER XXI
During that terrible space which followed an eternity of time rolled slowly through the little cabin on the Gray Loon—that eternity which lies somewhere between life and death and which is sometimes meted out to a human life in seconds instead of eons.
In those seconds Pierrot did not move from where he stood in the doorway. McTaggart, huddled over with the weight in his arms, and staring at Pierrot, did not move. But the Willow’s eyes were opening. And a convulsive quiver ran through the body of Baree, where he lay near the wall. There was not the sound of a breath. And then, in that silence, a great gasping sob came from Nepeese.
Then Pierrot stirred to life. Like McTaggart, he had left his coat and mittens outside. He spoke, and his voice was not like Pierrot’s. It was a strange voice.
“The great God has sent me back in time, m’sieu,” he said. “I, too, travelled by way of the east, and saw your trail where it turned this way.”
No, that was not like Pierrot’s voice! A chill ran through McTaggart now, and slowly he let go of Nepeese. She fell to the floor. Slowly he straightened.
“Is it not true, m’sieu?” said Pierrot again. “I have come in time?”
What power was it—what great fear, perhaps, that made McTaggart nod his head, that made his thick lips form huskily the words, “Yes—in time.” And yet it was not fear. It was something greater, something more all-powerful than that. And Pierrot said, in that same strange voice:
“I thank the great God!”
The eyes of madman met the eyes of madman now. Between them was death. Both saw it. Both thought that they saw the direction in which its bony finger pointed. Both were certain. McTaggart’s hand did not go to the pistol in his holster, and Pierrot did not touch the knife in his belt. When they came together, it was throat to throat—two beasts now, instead of one, for Pierrot had in him the fury and strength of the wolf, the cat, and the panther.
McTaggart was the bigger and heavier man, a giant in strength; yet in the face of Pierrot’s fury he lurched back over the table and went down with a crash. Many times in his life he had fought, but he had never felt a grip at his throat like the grip of Pierrot’s hands. They almost crushed the life from him at once. His neck snapped—a little more, and it would have broken. He struck out blindly from his back, and twisted himself to throw off the weight of the halfbreed’s body. But Pierrot was fastened there, as Sekoosew the ermine had fastened itself at the jugular of the partridge, and Bush McTaggart’s jaws slowly swung open, and his face began to turn from red to purple.
Cold air rushing through the door, Pierrot’s voice and the sound of battle roused Nepeese quickly to consciousness and the power to raise herself from the floor. She had fallen near Baree, and as she lifted her head, her eyes rested for a moment on the dog before they went to the fighting men. Baree was alive! His body was twitching; his eyes were open; he made an effort to raise his head as she was looking at him.
Then she dragged herself to her knees and turned to the men, and Pierrot, even in the blood-red fury of his desire to kill, must have heard the sharp cry of joy that came from her when she saw that it was the Factor from Lac Bain who was underneath. With a tremendous effort she staggered to her feet, and for a few moments she stood swaying unsteadily as her brain and her body readjusted themselves. Even as she looked down upon the blackening face from which Pierrot’s fingers were choking the life, Bush McTaggart’s hand was groping blindly for his pistol. He found it. Unseen by Pierrot, he dragged it from its holster. It was one of the black devils of chance that favoured him again, for in his excitement he had not snapped the safety shut after shooting Baree. Now he had only strength left to pull the trigger. Twice his forefinger closed. Twice there came deadened explosion close to Pierrot’s body.
In Pierrot’s face Nepeese saw what had happened. Her heart died in her breast as she looked upon the swift and terrible change wrought by sudden death. Slowly Pierrot straightened. His eyes were wide for a moment—wide and staring. He made no sound. She could not see his lips move. And then he fell toward her, so that McTaggart’s body was free. Blindly and with an agony that gave no evidence in cry or word she flung herself down beside him. He was dead.
How long Nepeese lay there, how long she waited for Pierrot to move, to open his eyes, to breathe, she would never know. In that time McTaggart rose to his feet and stood leaning against the wall, the pistol in his hand, his brain clearing itself as he saw his final triumph. His work did not frighten him. Even in that tragic moment as he stood against the wall, his defense—if it ever came to a defense—framed itself in his mind. Pierrot had murderously assaulted him—without cause. In self-defense he had killed him. Was he not the Factor of Lac Bain? Would not the Company and the law believe his word before that of this girl? His brain leaped with the old exultation. It would never come to that—to a betrayal of this struggle and death in the cabin—after he had finished with her! She would not be known for all time asLa Bête Noir. No, they would bury Pierrot, and she would return to Lac Bain with him. If she had been helpless before, she was ten times more helpless now. She would never tell of what had happened in the cabin.
He forgot the presence of death as he looked at her, bowed over her father so that her hair covered him like a silken shroud. He replaced the pistol in its holster and drew a deep breath into his lungs. He was still a little unsteady on his feet, but his face was again the face of a devil. He took a step, and it was then there came a sound to rouse the girl. In the shadow of the farther wall Baree had struggled to his haunches, and now he growled.
Slowly Nepeese lifted her head. A power which she could not resist drew her eyes up until she was looking into the face of Bush McTaggart. She had almost lost consciousness of his presence; her senses were cold and deadened—it was as if her own heart had stopped beating along with Pierrot’s. What she saw in the Factor’s face dragged her out of the numbness of her grief back to the abyss of her own peril. He was standing over her. In his face there was no pity, nothing of horror at what he had done—only an insane exultation as he looked—not at Pierrot’s dead body, but at her. He put out a hand, and it rested on her head. She felt his thick fingers crumpling her hair, and his eyes blazed like embers of fire behind watery films. She struggled to rise, but with his hands at her hair he held her down.
“Great God!” she breathed.
She uttered no other words, no plea for mercy, no other sound but a dry, hopeless sob. In that moment neither of them heard or saw Baree. Twice in crossing the cabin his hind-quarters had sagged to the floor. Now he was close to McTaggart. He wanted to give a single lunge to the man-brute’s back and snap his thick neck as he would have broken a caribou-bone. But he had no strength. He was still partially paralyzed from his fore-shoulder back. But his jaws were like iron, and they closed savagely on McTaggart’s leg.
With a yell of pain the Factor released his hold on the Willow, and she staggered to her feet. For a precious half-minute she was free, and as the Factor kicked and struck to loose Baree’s hold, she ran to the cabin door and out into the day. The cold air struck her face; it filled her lungs with new strength; and without thought of where hope might lie she ran through the snow into the forest.
McTaggart appeared at the door just in time to see her disappear. His leg was torn where Baree had fastened his fangs, but he felt no pain as he ran in pursuit of the girl. She could not go far. An exultant cry, inhuman as the cry of a beast, came in a great breath from his gaping mouth as he saw that she was staggering weakly as she fled. He was halfway to the edge of the forest when Baree dragged himself over the threshold. His jaws were bleeding where McTaggart had kicked him again and again before his fangs gave way. Halfway between his ears was a seared spot, as if a red-hot poker had been laid there for an instant. This was where McTaggart’s bullet had gone. A quarter of an inch deeper, and it would have meant death. As it was, it had been like the blow of a heavy club, paralyzing his senses and sending him limp and unconscious against the wall. He could move on his feet now without falling, and slowly he followed in the tracks of the man and the girl.
As she ran, Nepeese’s mind became all at once clear and reasoning. She turned into the narrow trail over which McTaggart had followed her once before, but just before reaching the chasm, she swung sharply to the right. She could see McTaggart. He was not running fast, but was gaining steadily, as if enjoying the sight of her helplessness, as he had enjoyed it in another way on that other day. Two hundred yards below the deep pool into which she had pushed the Factor—just beyond the shallows out of which he had dragged himself to safety—was the beginning of Blue Feather’s Gorge. An appalling thing was shaping itself in her mind as she ran to it—a thing that with each gasping breath she drew became more and more a great and glorious hope. At last she reached it and looked down. And as she looked, there whispered up out of her soul and trembled on her lips the swan-song of her mother’s people.
Our fathers—come!Come from out of the valley.Guide us—for to-day we die,And the winds whisper of death!
Our fathers—come!Come from out of the valley.Guide us—for to-day we die,And the winds whisper of death!
Our fathers—come!Come from out of the valley.Guide us—for to-day we die,And the winds whisper of death!
Our fathers—come!
Come from out of the valley.
Guide us—for to-day we die,
And the winds whisper of death!
She had raised her arms. Against the white wilderness beyond the chasm she stood tall and slim. Fifty yards behind her the Factor from Lac Bain stopped suddenly in his tracks. “Ah,” he mumbled. “Is she not wonderful!” And behind McTaggart, coming faster and faster, was Baree.
Again the Willow looked down. She was at the edge, for she had no fear in this hour. Many times she had clung to Pierrot’s hand as she looked over. Down there no one could fall and live. Fifty feet below her the water which never froze was smashing itself into froth among the rocks. It was deep and black and terrible, for between the narrow rock walls the sun did not reach it. The roar of it filled the Willow’s ears.
She turned and faced McTaggart.
Even then he did not guess, but came toward her again, his arms stretched out ahead of him. Fifty yards! It was not much, and shortening swiftly.
Once more the Willow’s lips moved. After all, it is the mother soul that gives us faith to meet eternity—and it was to the spirit of her mother that the Willow called in the hour of death. With the call on her lips she plunged into the abyss, her wind-whipped hair clinging to her in a glistening shroud.
CHAPTER XXII
A moment later the Factor from Lac Bain stood at the edge of the chasm. His voice had called out in a hoarse bellow—a wild cry of disbelief and horror that had formed the Willow’s name as she disappeared. He looked down, clutching his huge red hands and staring in ghastly suspense at the boiling water and black rocks far below. There was nothing there now—no sign of her, no last flash of her pale face and streaming hair in the white foam. And she had donethat—to save herself from him!
The soul of the man-beast turned sick within him, so sick that he staggered back, his vision blinded and his legs tottering under him. He had killed Pierrot, and it had been a triumph; all his life he had played the part of the brute with a stoicism and cruelty that had known no shock—nothing like this that overwhelmed him now, numbing him to the marrow of his bones until he stood like one paralyzed. He did not see Baree. He did not hear the dog’s whining cries at the edge of the chasm. For a few moments the world turned black for him; and then, dragging himself out of his stupor, he ran frantically along the edge of the gorge, looking down wherever his eyes could reach the water, striving for a glimpse of her. At last it grew too deep. There was no hope. She was gone—and she had facedthatto escape him!
He mumbled that fact over and over again, stupidly, thickly, as though his brain could grasp nothing beyond it. She was dead. And Pierrot was dead. And he, in a few minutes, had accomplished it all.
He turned back toward the cabin—not by the trail over which he had pursued Nepeese, but straight through the thick bush. Great flakes of snow had begun to fall. He looked at the sky, where banks of dark clouds were rolling up from the south and east. The sun went out. Soon there would be a storm—a heavy snowstorm. The big flakes falling on his naked hands and face set his mind to work. It was lucky for him, this storm. It would cover everything—the fresh trails, even the grave he would dig for Pierrot.
It does not take such a man as the Factor long to recover from a moral concussion. By the time he came in sight of the cabin his mind was again at work on physical things—on the necessities of the situation. The appalling thing, after all, was not that both Pierrot and Nepeese were dead, but that his dream was shattered. It was not that Nepeese was dead, but that he had lost her. This was his vital disappointment. The other thing—his crime—it was easy to cover.
It was not sentiment that made him dig Pierrot’s grave close to the princess mother’s under the tall spruce. It was not sentiment that made him dig the grave at all, but caution. He buried Pierrot decently. Then he poured Pierrot’s stock of kerosene where it would be most effective and touched a match to it. He stood in the edge of the forest until the cabin was a mass of flames. The snow was falling thickly. The freshly made grave was a white mound, and the trails were filling. For the physical things he had done there was no fear in Bush McTaggart’s heart as he turned back toward Lac Bain. No one would ever look into the grave of Pierrot du Quesne. And there was no one to betray him if such a miracle happened. But of one thing his black soul would never be able to free itself. Always he would see the pale, triumphant face of the Willow as she stood facing him in that moment of her glory when, even as she was choosing death rather than him, he had cried to himself: “Ah! Is she not wonderful!”
As Bush McTaggart had forgotten Baree, so Baree had forgotten the Factor from Lac Bain. When McTaggart had run along the edge of the chasm, Baree had squatted himself in the foot-beaten plot of snow where Nepeese had last stood, his body stiffened and his forefeet braced as he looked down. He had seen her take the leap. Many times that summer he had followed her in her daring dives into the deep, quiet water of the pool. But this was a tremendous distance. She had never dived into a place like that. He could see the black heads of the rocks, appearing and disappearing in the whirling foam like the heads of monsters at play; the roar of the water filled him with dread; his eyes caught the swift rush of crumbled ice between the rock walls. And she had gone down there!
He had a great desire to follow her, to jump in, as he had always jumped in after her. She was surely down there, even though he could not see her. Probably she was playing among the rocks and hiding herself in the white froth and wondering why he didn’t come. But he hesitated—hesitated with his head and neck over the abyss, and his forefeet giving way a little in the snow. With an effort he dragged himself back and whined. He caught the fresh scent of McTaggart’s moccasins in the snow, and the whine changed slowly into a long snarl. He looked over again. Still he could not see her. He barked—the short, sharp signal with which he always called her. There was no answer. Again and again he barked, and always there was nothing but the roar of the water that came back to him. Then for a few moments he stood back, silent and listening, his body shivering with the strange dread that was possessing him.
The snow was falling now, and McTaggart had returned to the cabin. After a little Baree followed in the trail he had made along the edge of the chasm, and wherever McTaggart had stopped to peer over, Baree paused also. For a space his hatred of the man was burned up in his desire to join the Willow, and he continued along the gorge until, a quarter of a mile beyond where the Factor had last looked into it, he came to the narrow trail down which he and Nepeese had many time adventured in quest of rock-violets. The twisting path that led down the face of the cliff was filled with snow now, but Baree cleared his way through it until at last he stood at the edge of the unfrozen torrent. Nepeese was not here. He whined, and barked again, but this time there was in his signal to her an uneasy repression, a whimpering note which told that he did not expect a reply. For five minutes after that he sat on his haunches in the snow, stolid as a rock. What it was that came down out of the dark mystery and tumult of the chasm to him, what spirit-whispers of nature that told him the truth, it is beyond the power of reason to explain. But he listened, and he looked; and his muscles twitched as the truth grew in him; and at last he raised his head slowly until his black muzzle pointed to the white storm in the sky, and out of his throat there went forth the quavering, long-drawn howl of the husky who mourns outside the tepee of a master who is newly dead.
On the trail, heading for Lac Bain, Bush McTaggart heard that cry and shivered.
It was the smell of smoke, thickening in the air until it stung his nostrils, that drew Baree at last away from the chasm and back to the cabin. There was not much left when he came to the clearing. Where the cabin had been was a red-hot, smouldering mass. For a long time he sat watching it, still waiting and still listening. He no longer felt the effect of the bullet that had stunned him, but his senses were undergoing another change now, as strange and unreal as their struggle against that darkness of near-death in the cabin. In a space that had not covered more than an hour the world had twisted itself grotesquely for Baree. That long ago the Willow was sitting before her little mirror in the cabin, talking to him and laughing in her happiness, while he lay in vast contentment on the floor. And now there was no cabin, no Nepeese, no Pierrot. Quietly he struggled to comprehend. It was some time before he moved from under the thick balsams, for already a deep and growing suspicion began to guide his movements. He did not go nearer to the smouldering mass of the cabin, but slinking low, made his way about the circle of the open to the dog-corral. This took him under the tall spruce. For a full minute he paused here, sniffing at the freshly made mound under its white mantle of snow. When he went on, he slunk still lower, and his ears were flat against his head.
The dog-corral was open and empty. McTaggart had seen to that. Again Baree squatted back on his haunches and sent forth the death-howl. This time it was for Pierrot. In it there was a different note from that of the howl he had sent forth from the chasm: it was positive, certain. In the chasm his cry had been tempered with doubt—a questioning hope, something that was so almost human that McTaggart had shivered on the trail. But Baree knew what lay in that freshly dug snow-covered grave. A scant three feet of earth could not hide its secret from him. There was death—definite and unequivocal. But for Nepeese he was still hoping and seeking.
Until noon he did not go far from the cabin, but only once did he actually approach and sniff about the black pile of steaming timbers. Again and again he circled the edge of the clearing, keeping just within the bush and timber, sniffing the air and listening. Twice he went back to the chasm. Late in the afternoon there came to him a sudden impulse that carried him swiftly through the forest. He did not run openly now; caution, suspicion, and fear had roused in him afresh the instincts of the wolf. With his ears flattened against the side of his head, his tail drooping until the tip of it dragged the snow and his back sagging in the curious, evasive gait of the wolf, he scarcely made himself distinguishable from the shadows of the spruce and balsams.
There was no faltering in the trail Baree made; it was straight as a rope might have been drawn through the forest, and it brought him, early in the dusk, to the open spot where Nepeese had fled with him that day she had pushed McTaggart over the edge of the precipice into the pool. In the place of the balsam shelter of that day there was now a water-tight birch-bark tepee which Pierrot had helped the Willow to make during the summer. Baree went straight to it and thrust in his head with a low and expectant whine.
There was no answer. It was dark and cold in the tepee. He could make out indistinctly the two blankets that were always in it, the row of big tin boxes in which Nepeese kept their stores, and the stove which Pierrot had improvised out of scraps of iron and heavy tin. But Nepeese was not there. And there was no sign of her outside. The snow was unbroken except by his own trail. It was dark when he returned to the burned cabin. All that night he hung about the deserted dog-corral, and all through the night the snow fell steadily, so that by dawn he sank into it to his shoulders when he moved out into the clearing.
But with day the sky had cleared. The sun came up, and the world was almost too dazzling for the eyes. It warmed Baree’s blood with new hope and expectation. His brain struggled even more eagerly than yesterday to comprehend. Surely the Willow would be returning soon! He would hear her voice. She would appear suddenly out of the forest. He would receive some signal from her. One of these things, or all of them, must happen. He stopped sharply in his tracks at every sound, and sniffed the air from every point of the wind. He was travelling ceaselessly. His body made deep trails in the snow around and over the huge white mound where the cabin had stood; his tracks led from the corral to the tall spruce, and they were as numerous as the footprints of a wolf-pack for half a mile up and down the chasm.
On the afternoon of this day the second big impulse came to him. It was not reason, and neither was it instinct alone. It was the struggle halfway between, the brute mind fighting at its best with the mystery of an intangible thing—something that could not be seen by the eye or heard by the ear. Nepeese was not in the cabin, because there was no cabin. She was not at the tepee. He could find no trace of her in the chasm. She was not with Pierrot under the big spruce.
Therefore, unreasoning but sure, he began to follow the old trap-line into the north and west.