CHAPTER XXVII
The next morning Bush McTaggart heard the clanking of a chain when he was still a good quarter of a mile from the “nest.” Was it a lynx? Was it a fisher-cat? Was it a wolf or a fox?Or was it Baree?He half ran the rest of the distance, and at last he came to where he could see, and his heart leaped into his throat when he saw that he had caught his enemy. He approached, holding his rifle ready to fire if by any chance the dog should free himself.
Baree lay on his side, panting from exhaustion and quivering with pain. A hoarse cry of exultation burst from McTaggart’s lips as he drew nearer and looked at the snow. It was packed hard for many feet about the trap-house, where Baree had struggled, and it was red with blood. The blood had come mostly from Baree’s jaws. They were dripping now as he glared at his enemy. The steel jaws hidden under the snow had done their merciless work well. One of his forefeet was caught well up toward the first joint; both hind feet were caught; a fourth trap had closed on his flank, and in tearing the jaws loose he had pulled off a patch of skin half as big as McTaggart’s hand. The snow told the story of his desperate fight all through the night; his bleeding jaws showed how vainly he had tried to break the imprisoning steel with his teeth. He was panting. His eyes were bloodshot. But even now, after all his hours of agony, neither his spirit nor his courage were broken. When he saw McTaggart he made a lunge to his feet, almost instantly crumpling down into the snow again. But his forefeet were braced. His head and chest remained up, and the snarl that came from his throat was tigerish in its ferocity. Here, at last—not more than a dozen feet from him—was the one thing in all the world that he hated more than he hated the wolf breed. And again he was helpless, as he had been helpless that other time in the rabbit snare.
The fierceness of his snarl did not disturb Bush McTaggart now. He saw how utterly the other was at his mercy, and with an exultant laugh he leaned his rifle against a tree, pulled off his mittens, and began loading his pipe. This was the triumph he had looked forward to, the torture he had waited for. In his soul there was a hatred as deadly as Baree’s, the hatred that a man might have for a man. He had expected to send a bullet through the dog. But this was better—to watch him dying by inches, to taunt him as he would have taunted a human, to walk about him so that he could hear the clank of the traps and see the fresh blood drip as Baree twisted his tortured legs and body to keep facing him. It was a splendid vengeance. He was so engrossed in it that he did not hear the approach of snowshoes behind him. It was a voice—a man’s voice—that turned him round suddenly.
The man was a stranger, and he was younger than McTaggart by ten years. At least he looked no more than thirty-five or six, even with the short growth of blonde beard he wore. He was of that sort that the average man would like at a glance; boyish, and yet a man; with clear eyes that looked out frankly from under the rim of his fur cap, a form lithe as an Indian’s, and a face altogether that did not bear the hard lines of the wilderness. Yet McTaggart knew before he had spoken that this manwasof the wilderness, that he was heart and soul a part of it. His cap was of fisher-skin. He wore a windproof coat of softly tanned caribou skin, belted at the waist with a long sash, and Indian fringed. The inside of the coat was furred. He was travelling on the long, slender bush-country snowshoe; his pack, strapped over the shoulders, was small and compact; he was carrying his rifle in a cloth jacket. And from cap to snowshoes he wastravel-worn. McTaggart, at a guess, would have said that he had travelled a thousand miles in the last few weeks. It was not this thought that sent the strange and chilling thrill up his back; but the sudden fear that in some strange way a whisper of the truth might have found its way down into the south—the truth of what had happened on the Gray Loon—and that this travel-worn stranger wore under his caribou-skin coat the badge of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. For that instant it was almost a terror that possessed him, and he stood mute.
The stranger had uttered only an amazed exclamation before. Now he said, with his eyes on Baree:
“God save us, but you’ve got the poor devil in a right proper mess, haven’t you?”
There was something in the voice that reassured McTaggart. It was not a suspicious voice, and he saw that the stranger was more interested in the captured animal than in himself. He drew a deep breath.
“A trap robber,” he said.
The stranger was staring still more closely at Baree. He thrust his gun stock downward in the snow and drew nearer to him.
“God save us again—a dog!” he exclaimed.
From behind, McTaggart was watching the man with the eyes of a ferret.
“Yes, a dog,” he answered. “A wild dog, half wolf at least. He’s robbed me of a thousand dollars’ worth of fur this winter.”
The stranger squatted himself before Baree, with his mittened hands resting on his knees, and his white teeth gleaming in a half smile.
“You poor devil!” he said sympathetically. “So you’re a trap robber, eh? An outlaw? And—the Police have got you! And—God save us once more—they haven’t played you a very square game!”
He rose and faced McTaggart.
“I had to set a lot of traps like that,” the Factor apologized, his face reddening slightly under the steady gaze of the stranger’s blue eyes. Suddenly his animus rose. “And he’s going to die there, inch by inch. I’m going to let him starve, and rot in the traps, to pay for all he’s done.” He picked up his gun, and added, with his eyes on the stranger and his finger ready at the trigger, “I’m Bush McTaggart, the Factor at Lac Bain. Are you bound that way, M’sieu?”
“A few miles. I’m bound up-country—beyond the Barrens.”
McTaggart felt again the strange thrill.
“Government?” he asked.
The stranger nodded.
“The—Police, perhaps,” persisted McTaggart.
“Why, yes—of course—the Police,” said the stranger, looking straight into the Factor’s eyes. “And now, M’sieu, as a very great courtesy to the Law I’m going to ask you to send a bullet through that beast’s head before we go on. Will you? Or shall I?”
“It’s the law of the line,” said McTaggart, “to let a trap robber rot in the traps. And that beast was a devil. Listen——”
Swiftly, and yet leaving out none of the fine detail, he told of the weeks and months of strife between himself and Baree; of the maddening futility of all his tricks and schemes and the still more maddening cleverness of the beast he had at last succeeded in trapping.
“He was a devil—that clever,” he cried fiercely when he had finished. “And now—would you shoot him, or let him lie there and die by inches, as the devil should?”
The stranger was looking at Baree. His face was turned away from McTaggart. He said:
“I guess you are right. Let the devil rot. If you’re heading for Lac Bain, M’sieu, I’ll travel a short distance with you now. It will take a couple of miles to straighten out the line of my compass.”
He picked up his gun. McTaggart led the way. At the end of half an hour the stranger stopped, and pointed north.
“Straight up there—a good five hundred miles,” he said, speaking as lightly as though he would reach home that night. “I’ll leave you here.”
He made no offer to shake hands. But in going, he said,
“You might report that John Madison has passed this way.”
After that he travelled straight northward for half a mile through the deep forest. Then he swung westward for two miles, turned at a sharp angle into the south, and an hour after he had left McTaggart he was once more squatted on his heels almost within arms’ reach of Baree.
And he was saying, as though speaking to a human companion:
“So that’s what you’ve been, old boy. A trap robber, eh? Anoutlaw? And you beat him at the game for two months! And for that, because you’re a better beast than he is, he wants to let you die here as slow as you can. Anoutlaw!” His voice broke into a pleasant laugh, the sort of laugh that warms one, even a beast. “That’s funny. We ought to shake hands. Boy, by George, we had! You’re a wild one, he says. Well, so am I. Told him my name was John Madison. It ain’t. I’m Jim Carvel. And, oh Lord!—all I said was ‘Police.’ And that was right. It ain’t a lie. I’m wanted by the whole corporation—by every danged policeman between Hudson’s Bay and the Mackenzie River. Shake, old man. We’re in the same boat, an’ I’m glad to meet you!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
Jim Carvel held out his hand, and the snarl that was in Baree’s throat died away. The man rose to his feet. He stood there, looking in the direction taken by Bush McTaggart, and chuckled in a curious, exultant sort of way. There was friendliness even in that chuckle. There was friendliness in his eyes and in the shine of his teeth as he looked again at Baree. About him there was something that seemed to make the gray day brighter, that seemed to warm the chill air—a strange something that radiated cheer and hope and comradeship just as a hot stove sends out the glow of heat. Baree felt it. For the first time since the two men had come his trap-torn body lost its tenseness; his back sagged; his teeth clicked as he shivered in his agony. Tothisman he betrayed his weakness. In his bloodshot eyes there was a hungering look as he watched Carvel—the self-confessed outlaw. And Jim Carvel again held out his hand—much nearer this time.
“You poor devil,” he said, the smile going out of his face. “You poor devil!”
The words were like a caress to Baree—the first he had known since the loss of Nepeese and Pierrot. He dropped his head until his jaw lay flat in the snow. Carvel could see the blood dripping slowly from it.
“You poor devil!” he repeated.
There was no fear in the way he put forth his hand. It was the confidence of a great sincerity and a great compassion. It touched Baree’s head and patted it in a brotherly fashion, and then—slowly and with a bit more caution—it went to the trap fastened to Baree’s forepaw. In his half-crazed brain Baree was fighting to understand things, and the truth came finally when he felt the steel jaws of the trap open, and he drew forth his maimed foot. He did then what he had done to no other creature but Nepeese. Just once his hot tongue shot out and licked Carvel’s hand. The man laughed. With his powerful hands he opened the other traps, and Baree was free.
For a few moments he lay without moving, his eyes fixed on the man. Carvel had seated himself on the snow-covered end of a birch log and was filling his pipe. Baree watched him light it; he noted with new interest the first purplish cloud of smoke that left Carvel’s mouth. The man was not more than the length of two trap-chains away—and he grinned at Baree.
“Screw up your nerve, old chap,” he encouraged. “No bones broke. Just a little stiff. Mebby we’d better—get out.”
He turned his face in the direction of Lac Bain. The suspicion was in his mind that McTaggart might turn back. Perhaps that same suspicion was impressed upon Baree, for when Carvel looked at him again he was on his feet, staggering a bit as he gained his equilibrium. In another moment the outlaw had swung the pack-sack from his shoulders and was opening it. He thrust in his hand and drew out a chunk of raw, red meat.
“Killed it this morning,” he explained to Baree. “Yearling bull, tender as partridge—and that’s as fine a sweetbread as ever came out from under a backbone. Try it!”
He tossed the flesh to Baree. There was no equivocation in the manner of its acceptance. Baree was famished—and the meat was flung to him by a friend. He buried his teeth in it. His jaws crunched it. New fire leapt into his blood as he feasted, but not for an instant did his reddened eyes leave the other’s face. Carvel replaced his pack. He rose to his feet, took up his rifle, slipped on his snowshoes, and fronted the north.
“Come on, Boy,” he said. “We’ve got to travel.”
It was a matter-of-fact invitation, as though the two had been travelling companions for a long time. It was, perhaps, not only an invitation but partly a command. It puzzled Baree. For a full half minute he stood motionless in his tracks gazing at Carvel as he strode into the north. A sudden convulsive twitching shot through Baree; he swung his head toward Lac Bain; he looked again at Carvel, and a whine that was scarcely more than a breath came out of his throat. The man was just about to disappear into the thick spruce. He paused, and looked back.
“Coming, Boy?”
Even at that distance Baree could see him grinning affably; he saw the outstretched hand, and the voice stirred new sensations in him. It was not like Pierrot’s voice. He had never loved Pierrot. Neither was it soft and sweet like the Willow’s. He had known only a few men, and all of them he had regarded with distrust. But this was a voice that disarmed him. It was lureful in its appeal. He wanted to answer it. He was filled with a desire, all at once, to follow close at the heels of this stranger. For the first time in his life a craving for the friendship of man possessed him. He did not move until Jim Carvel entered the spruce. Then he followed.
That night they were camped in a dense growth of cedars and balsams ten miles north of Bush McTaggart’s trap-line. For two hours it had snowed, and their trail was covered. It was still snowing, but not a flake of the white deluge sifted down through the thick canopy of boughs. Carvel had put up his small silk tent, and had built a fire; their supper was over, and Baree lay on his belly facing the outlaw, almost within reach of his hand. With his back to a tree Carvel was smoking luxuriously. He had thrown off his cap and his coat, and in the warm fireglow he looked almost boyishly young. But even in that glow his jaws lost none of their squareness, nor his eyes their clear alertness.
“Seems good to have some one to talk to,” he was saying to Baree. “Some one who can understand, an’ keep his mouth shut. Did you ever want to howl, an’ didn’t dare? Well, that’s me. Sometimes I’ve been on the point of bustin’ because I wanted to talk to some one, an’ couldn’t.”
He rubbed his hands together, and held them out toward the fire. Baree watched his movements and listened intently to every sound that escaped his lips. His eyes had in them now a dumb sort of worship, a look that warmed Carvel’s heart and did away with the vast loneliness and emptiness of the night. Baree had dragged himself nearer to the man’s feet, and suddenly Carvel leaned over and patted his head.
“I’m a bad one, old chap,” he chuckled. “You haven’t got it on me—not a bit. Want to know what happened?” He waited a moment, and Baree looked at him steadily. Then Carvel went on, as if speaking to a human, “Let’s see—it was five years ago, five years this December, just before Christmas time. Had a Dad. Fine old chap, my Dad was. No Mother—just the Dad, an’ when you added us up we made just One. Understand? And along came a white-striped skunk named Hardy and shot him one day because Dad had worked against him in politics. Out an’ out murder. An’ they didn’t hang that skunk! No, sir, they didn’t hang him. He had too much money, an’ too many friends in politics, an’ they let ’im off with two years in the penitentiary. But he didn’t get there. No—s’elp me God, he didn’t get there!”
Carvel was twisting his hands until his knuckles cracked. An exultant smile lighted up his face, and his eyes flashed back the firelight. Baree drew a deep breath—a mere coincidence; but it was a tense moment for all that.
“No, he didn’t get to the penitentiary,” went on Carvel, looking straight at Baree again. “Yours truly knew what that meant, old chap. He’d have been pardoned inside a year. An’ there was my Dad, the biggest half of me, in his grave. So I just went up to that white-striped skunk right there before the Judge’s eyes, an’ the lawyers’ eyes, an’ the eyes of all his dear relatives an’ friends—and I killed him! And I got away. Was out through a window before they woke up, hit for the bush country, and have been eating up the trails ever since. An’ I guess God was with me, Boy. For He did a queer thing to help me out summer before last, just when the Mounties were after me hardest an’ it looked pretty black. Man was found drowned down in the Reindeer Country, right where they thought I was cornered; an’ the good Lord made that man look so much like me that he was buried under my name. So I’m officially dead, old chap. I don’t need to be afraid any more so long as I don’t get too familiar with people for a year or so longer, and ’way down inside me I’ve liked to believe God fixed it up in that way to help me out of a bad hole. What’syouropinion? Eh?”
He leaned forward for an answer. Baree had listened. Perhaps, in a way, he had understood. But it was another sound than Carvel’s voice that came to his ears now. With his head close to the ground he heard it quite distinctly. He whined, and the whine ended in a snarl so low that Carvel just caught the warning note in it. He straightened. He stood up then, and faced the south. Baree stood beside him, his legs tense and his spine bristling.
After a moment Carvel said:
“Relatives of yours, old chap. Wolves.”
He went into the tent for his rifle and cartridges.
CHAPTER XXIX
Baree was on his feet, rigid as hewn rock, when Carvel came out of the tent, and for a few moments Carvel stood in silence, watching him closely. Would the dog respond to the call of the pack? Did he belong to them? Would he go—now? The wolves were drawing nearer. They were not circling, as a caribou or a deer would have circled, but were travelling straight—dead straight for their camp. The significance of this fact was easily understood by Carvel. All that afternoon Baree’s feet had left a blood-smell in their trail, and the wolves had struck the trail in the deep forest, where the falling snow had not covered it. Carvel was not alarmed. More than once in his five years of wandering between the Arctic and the Height of Land he had played the game with the wolves. Once he had almost lost, but that was out in the open Barren. To-night he had a fire, and in the event of his firewood running out he had trees he could climb. His anxiety just now was centred in Baree. So he said, making his voice quite casual,
“You aren’t going, are you, old chap?”
If Baree heard him he gave no evidence of it. But Carvel, still watching him closely, saw that the hair along his spine had risen like a brush, and then he heard—growing slowly in Baree’s throat—a snarl of ferocious hatred. It was the sort of snarl that had held back the Factor from Lac Bain, and Carvel, opening the breech of his gun to see that all was right, chuckled happily. Baree may have heard the chuckle. Perhaps it meant something to him, for he turned his head suddenly and with flattened ears looked at his companion.
The wolves were silent now. Carvel knew what that meant, and he was tensely alert. In the stillness the click of the safety on his rifle sounded with metallic sharpness. For many minutes they heard nothing but the crack of the fire. Suddenly Baree’s muscles seemed to snap. He sprang back, and faced the quarter behind Carvel, his head level with his shoulders, his inch-long fangs gleaming as he snarled into the black caverns of the forest beyond the rim of firelight. Carvel had turned like a shot. It was almost frightening—what he saw. A pair of eyes burning with greenish fire, and then another pair, and after that so many of them that he could not have counted them. He gave a sudden gasp. They were like cat-eyes, only much larger. Some of them, catching the firelight fully, were red as coals, others flashed blue and green—living things without bodies. With a swift glance he took in the black circle of the forest. They were out there, too; they were on all sides of them, but where he had seen them first they were thickest. In these first few seconds he had forgotten Baree, awed almost to stupefaction by that monster-eyed cordon of death that hemmed them in. There were fifty—perhaps a hundred wolves out there, afraid of nothing in all this savage world but fire. They had come up without the sound of a padded foot or a broken twig. If it had been later, and they had been asleep, and the fire out——
He shuddered, and for a moment the thought got the better of his nerves. He had not intended to shoot except from necessity, but all at once his rifle came to his shoulder and he sent a stream of fire out where the eyes were thickest. Baree knew what the shots meant, and filled with the mad desire to get at the throat of one of his enemies he dashed in their direction. Carvel gave a startled yell as he went. He saw the flash of Baree’s body, saw it swallowed up in the gloom, and in that same instant heard the deadly clash of fangs and the impact of bodies. A wild thrill shot through him. The dog had charged alone—and the wolves had waited. There could be but one end. His four-footed comrade had gone straight into the jaws of death!
He could hear the ravening snap of those jaws out in the darkness. It was sickening. His hand went to the Colt .45 at his belt, and he thrust his empty rifle butt downward into the snow. With the big automatic before his eyes he plunged out into the darkness, and from his lips there issued a wild yelling that could have been heard a mile away. With the yelling a steady stream of fire spat from the Colt into the mass of fighting beasts. There were eight shots in the automatic, and not until the plunger clicked with metallic emptiness did Carvel cease his yelling and retreat into the firelight. He listened, breathing deeply. He no longer saw eyes in the darkness, nor did he hear the movement of bodies. The suddenness and ferocity of his attack had driven back the wolf-horde. But the dog! He caught his breath, and strained his eyes. A shadow was dragging itself into the circle of light. It was Baree. Carvel ran to him, put his arms under his shoulders, and brought him to the fire.
For a long time after that there was a questioning light in Carvel’s eyes. He reloaded his guns, put fresh fuel on the fire, and from his pack dug out strips of cloth with which he bandaged three or four of the deepest cuts in Baree’s legs. And a dozen times he asked, in a wondering sort of way,
“Now what the deuce made you do that, old chap? What haveyougot against the wolves?”
All that night he did not sleep, but watched.
Their experience with the wolves broke down the last bit of uncertainty that might have existed between the man and the dog. For days after that, as they travelled slowly north and west, Carvel nursed Baree as he might have cared for a sick child. Because of the dog’s hurts, he made only a few miles a day. Baree understood, and in him there grew stronger and stronger a great love for the man whose hands were as gentle as the Willow’s and whose voice warmed him with the thrill of an immeasurable comradeship. He no longer feared him or had a suspicion of him. And Carvel, on his part, was observing things. The vast emptiness of the world about them, and their aloneness, gave him the opportunity of pondering over unimportant details, and he found himself each day watching Baree a little more closely. He made at last a discovery which interested him deeply. Always, when they halted on the trail, Baree would turn his face to the south; when they were in camp it was from the south that he nosed the wind most frequently. This was quite natural. Carvel thought, for his old hunting-grounds were back there. But as the days passed he began to notice other things. Now and then, looking off into the far country from which they had come, Baree would whine softly, and on that day he would be filled with a great restlessness. He gave no evidence of wanting to leave Carvel, but more and more Carvel came to understand that some mysterious call was coming to him from out of the south.
It was the wanderer’s intention to swing over into the country of the Great Slave, a good eight hundred miles to the north and west, before the mush-snows came. From there, when the waters opened in springtime, he planned to travel by canoe westward to the Mackenzie and ultimately to the mountains of British Columbia. These plans were changed in February. They were caught in a great storm in the Wholdaia Lake country, and when their fortunes looked darkest Carvel stumbled on a cabin in the heart of a deep spruce forest, and in this cabin there was a dead man. He had been dead for many days, and was frozen stiff. Carvel chopped a hole in the earth and buried him.
The cabin was a treasure trove to Carvel and Baree, and especially to the man. It evidently possessed no other owner than the one who had died; it was comfortable and stocked with provisions; and more than that, its owner had made a splendid catch of fur before the frost bit his lungs, and he died. Carvel went over them carefully and joyously. They were worth a thousand dollars at any post, and he could see no reason why they did not belong to him now. Within a week he had blazed out the dead man’s snow-covered trap-line and was trapping on his own account.
This was two hundred miles north and west of the Gray Loon, and soon Carvel observed that Baree did not face directly south in those moments when the strange call came to him, but south and east. And now, with each day that passed, the sun rose higher in the sky; it grew warmer; the snow softened underfoot, and in the air was the tremulous and growing throb of spring. With these things came the old yearning to Baree; the heart-thrilling call of the lonely graves back on the Gray Loon, of the burned cabin, the abandoned tepee beyond the pool—and of Nepeese. In his sleep he saw visions of things. He heard again the low, sweet voice of the Willow, felt the touch of her hand, was at play with her once more in the dark shades of the forest—and Carvel would sit and watch him as he dreamed, trying to read the meaning of what he saw and heard.
In April Carvel shouldered his furs up to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s post at Lac la Biche, which was still farther north. Baree accompanied him halfway, and then—at sundown Carvel returned to the cabin and found him there. He was so overjoyed that he caught the dog’s head in his arms and hugged it. They lived in the cabin until May. The buds were swelling then, and the smell of growing things had begun to rise up out of the earth.
Then Carvel found the first of the early Blue Flowers.
That night he packed up.
“It’s time to travel,” he announced to Baree. “And I’ve sort of changed my mind. We’re going back—there.”
And he pointed south.
CHAPTER XXX
A strange humour possessed Carvel as he began the southward journey. He did not believe in omens, good or bad. Superstition had played a small part in his life, but he possessed both curiosity and a love for adventure, and his years of lonely wandering had developed in him a wonderfully clear mental vision of things, which in other words might be called singularly active imagination. He knew that some irresistible force was drawing Baree back into the south—that it was pulling him not only along a given line of the compass, but to an exact point in that line. For no reason in particular the situation began to interest him more and more, and as his time was valueless, and he had no fixed destination in view, he began to experiment. For the first two days he marked the dog’s course by compass. It was due southeast. On the third morning Carvel purposely struck a course straight west. He noted quickly the change in Baree—his restlessness at first, and after that the dejected manner in which he followed at his heels. Toward noon Carvel swung sharply to the south and east again, and almost immediately Baree regained his old eagerness, and ran ahead of his master.
After this, for many days, Carvel followed the trail of the dog.
“Mebby I’m an idiot, old chap,” he apologized one evening. “But it’s a bit of fun, after all—an’ I’ve got to hit the line of rail before I can get over to the mountains, so what’s the difference? I’m game—so long as you don’t take me back to that chap at Lac Bain. Now—what the devil! Are you hitting for his trap-line, to get even? If that’s the case——”
He blew out a cloud of smoke from his pipe as he eyed Baree, and Baree, with his head between his forepaws, eyed him back.
A week later Baree answered Carvel’s question by swinging westward to give a wide berth to Post Lac Bain. It was mid-afternoon when they crossed the trail along which Bush McTaggart’s traps and deadfalls had been set. Baree did not even pause. He headed due south, travelling so fast that at times he was lost to Carvel’s sight. A suppressed but intense excitement possessed him, and he whined whenever Carvel stopped to rest—always with his nose sniffing the wind out of the south. Springtime, the flowers, the earth turning green, the singing of birds, and the sweet breaths in the air were bringing him back to that great Yesterday when he had belonged to Nepeese. In his unreasoning mind there existed no longer a winter. The long months of cold and hunger were gone; in the new visionings that filled his brain they were forgotten. The birds and flowers and the blue skies had come back, and with them the Willow must surely have returned, and she was waiting for him now, just over there beyond that rim of green forest.
Something greater than mere curiosity began to take possession of Carvel. A whimsical humour became a fixed and deeper thought, an unreasoning anticipation that was accompanied by a certain thrill of subdued excitement. By the time they reached the old beaver-pond the mystery of the strange adventure had a firm hold on him. From Beaver-tooth’s colony Baree led him to the creek along which Wakayoo, the black bear, had fished, and thence straight to the Gray Loon.
It was early afternoon of a wonderful day. It was so still that the rippling waters of spring, singing in a thousand rills and streamlets, filled the forests with a droning music. In the warm sun the crimson bakneesh glowed like blood. In the open spaces the air was scented with the perfume of Blue Flowers. In the trees and bushes mated birds were building their nests. After the long sleep of winter Nature was at work in all her glory. It wasUnekepesim, the Mating Moon, the Home Building Moon—and Baree was going home. Not to matehood—but to Nepeese. He knew that she was there now, perhaps at the very edge of the chasm where he had seen her last. They would be playing together again soon, as they had played yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and in his joy he barked up into Carvel’s face, and urged him to greater speed. Then they came to the clearing, and once more Baree stood like a rock. Carvel saw the charred ruins of the burned cabin, and a moment later the two graves under the tall spruce. He began to understand as his eyes returned slowly to the waiting, listening dog. A great swelling rose in his throat, and after a moment or two he said softly, and with an effort,
“Boy, I guess you’re home.”
Baree did not hear. With his head up and his nose tilted to the blue sky he was sniffing the air. What was it that came to him with the perfumes of the forests and the green meadow? Why was it that he trembled now as he stood there? What was there in the air? Carvel asked himself, and his questing eyes tried to answer the questions. Nothing. There was death here—death and desertion, that was all. And then, all at once, there came from Baree a strange cry—almost a human cry—and he was gone like the wind.
Carvel had thrown off his pack. He dropped his rifle beside it now, and followed Baree. He ran swiftly, straight across the open, into the dwarf balsams, and into a grass-grown path that had once been worn by the travel of feet. He ran until he was panting for breath, and then stopped, and listened. He could hear nothing of Baree. But that old worn trail led on under the forest trees, and he followed it.
Close to the deep, dark pool in which he and the Willow had disported so often Baree, too, had stopped. He could hear the rippling of water, and his eyes shone with a gleaming fire as he quested for Nepeese. He expected to see her there, her slim white body shimmering in some dark shadow of overhanging spruce, or gleaming suddenly white as snow in one of the warm plashes of sunlight. His eyes sought out their old hiding-places; the great split rock on the other side, the shelving banks under which they used to dive like otter, the spruce boughs that dipped down to the surface, and in the midst of which the Willow loved to screen her naked body while he searched the pool for her. And at last the realization was borne upon him that she was not there, that he had still farther to go.
He went on to the tepee. The little open space in which they had built their hidden wigwam was flooded with sunshine that came through a break in the forest to the west. The tepee was still there. It did not seem very much changed to Baree. And rising from the ground in front of the tepee was what had come to him faintly on the still air—the smoke of a small fire. Over that fire was bending a person, and it did not strike Baree as amazing, or at all unexpected, that this person should have two great shining braids down her back. He whined, and at his whine the Person grew a little rigid, and turned slowly.
Even then it seemed quite the most natural thing in the world that it should be Nepeese, and none other. He had lost her yesterday. To-day he had found her. And in answer to his whine there came a sobbing cry straight out of the soul of the Willow.
Carvel found them there a few minutes later, the dog’s head hugged close up against the Willow’s breast, and the Willow was crying—crying like a little child, her face hidden from him on Baree’s neck. He did not interrupt them, but waited; and as he waited something in the sobbing voice and the stillness of the forest seemed to whisper to him a bit of the story of the burned cabin and the two graves, and the meaning of the Call that had come to Baree from out of the south.
CHAPTER XXXI
That night there was a new campfire in the open. It was not a small fire, built with the fear that other eyes might see it, but a fire that sent its flames high. In the glow of it stood Carvel. And as the fire had changed from that small smouldering heap over which the Willow had cooked her dinner, so Carvel, the officially dead outlaw, had changed. The beard was gone from his face; he had thrown off his caribou-skin coat; his sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and there was a wild flush in his face that was not altogether the tanning of wind and sun and storm, and a glow in his eyes that had not been there for five years, perhaps never before. His eyes were on Nepeese. She sat in the firelight, leaning a little toward the blaze, her wonderful hair glowing warmly in the flash of it. Carvel did not move while she was in that attitude. He seemed scarcely to breathe. The glow in his eyes grew deeper—the worship of a man for a woman. Suddenly Nepeese turned and caught him before he could turn his gaze. There was nothing to hide in her own eyes. Like her face, they were flushed with a new hope and a new gladness. Carvel sat down beside her on the birch log, and in his hand he took one of her thick braids and crumpled it as he talked. At their feet, watching them, lay Baree.
“To-morrow or the next day I am going to Lac Bain,” he said, a hard and bitter note back of the gentle worship in his voice. “I will not come back until I have—killed him.”
The Willow looked straight into the fire. For a time there was a silence broken only by the crackling of the flames, and in that silence Carvel’s fingers weaved in and out of the silken strands of the Willow’s hair. His thoughts flashed back. What a chance he had missed that day on Bush McTaggart’s trap-line—if he had only known! His jaws set hard as he saw in the red-hot heart of the fire the mental pictures of the day when the Factor from Lac Bain had killed Pierrot. She had told him the whole story. Her flight. Her plunge to what she had thought was certain death in the icy torrent of the chasm. Her miraculous escape from the waters—and how she was discovered, nearly dead, by Tuboa, the toothless old Cree whom Pierrot out of pity had allowed to hunt in part of his domain. He felt within himself the tragedy and the horror of the one terrible hour in which the sun had gone out of the world for the Willow, and in the flames he could see faithful old Tuboa as he called on his last strength to bear Nepeese over the long miles that lay between the chasm and his cabin; he caught shifting visions of the weeks that followed in that cabin, weeks of hunger and of intense cold in which the Willow’s life hung by a single thread. And at last, when the snows were deepest, Tuboa had died. Carvel’s fingers clenched in the strands of the Willow’s braid. A deep breath rose out of his chest, and he said, staring deep into the fire,
“To-morrow I will go to Lac Bain.”
For a moment Nepeese did not answer. She, too, was looking into the fire. Then she said:
“Tuboa meant to kill him when the spring came, and he could travel. When Tuboa died I knew that it was I who must kill him. So I came, with Tuboa’s gun. It was fresh loaded—yesterday. And—M’sieuJeem”—she looked up at him, a triumphant glow in her eyes as she added, almost in a whisper—“You will not go to Lac Bain.I have sent a messenger.”
“A messenger?”
“Yes, Ookimow Jeem—a messenger. Two days ago. I sent word that I had not died, but was here—waiting for him—and that I would beIskwaonow, his wife. Oo-oo, he will come, Ookimow Jeem—he will come fast. And you shall not kill him.Non!” She smiled into his face, and the throb of Carvel’s heart was like a drum. “The gun is loaded,” she said softly. “I will shoot.”
“Two days ago,” said Carvel. “And from Lac Bain it is——”
“He will be here to-morrow,” Nepeese answered him. “To-morrow, as the sun goes down, he will enter the clearing. I know. My blood has been singing it all day. To-morrow—to-morrow—for he will travel fast, Ookimow Jeem. Yes, he will come fast.”
Carvel had bent his head. The soft tresses gripped in his fingers were crushed to his lips. The Willow, looking again into the fire, did not see. But shefelt—and her soul was beating like the wings of a bird.
“Ookimow Jeem,” she whispered—a breath, a flutter of the lips so soft that Carvel heard no sound.
If old Tuboa had been there that night it is possible he would have read strange warnings in the winds that whispered now and then softly in the treetops. It was such a night; a night when the Red Gods whisper low among themselves, a carnival of glory in which even the dipping shadows and the high stars seemed to quiver with the life of a potent language. It is barely possible that old Tuboa, with his ninety years behind him, would have learned something, or that at least he would havesuspecteda thing which Carvel in his youth and confidence did not see. To-morrow—he will come to-morrow! The Willow, exultant, had said that. But to old Tuboa the trees might have whispered,why not to-night?
It was midnight when the big moon stood full above the little open in the forest. In the tepee the Willow was sleeping. In a balsam shadow back from the fire slept Baree, and still farther back in the edge of a spruce thicket slept Carvel. Dog and man were tired. They had travelled far and fast that day, and they heard no sound.
But they had travelled neither so far nor so fast as Bush McTaggart. Between sunrise and midnight he had come forty miles when he strode out into the clearing where Pierrot’s cabin had stood. Twice from the edge of the forest he had called; and now, when he found no answer, he stood under the light of the moon and listened. Nepeese was to be here—waiting. He was tired, but exhaustion could not still the fire that burned in his blood. It had been blazing all day, and now—so near its realization and its triumph—the old passion was like a drunkening wine in his veins. Somewhere, near where he stood, Nepeese was waiting for him,waiting for him. Once again he called, his heart beating in a fierce anticipation as he listened. There was no answer. And then for a thrilling instant his breath stopped. He sniffed the air—and there came to him faintly the smell of smoke.
With the first instinct of the forest man he fronted the wind that was but a faint breath under the starlit skies. He did not call again, but hastened across the clearing. Nepeese was off there—somewhere—sleeping beside her fire, and out of him there rose a low cry of exultation. He came to the edge of the forest; chance directed his steps to the overgrown trail; he followed it, and the smoke smell came stronger to his nostrils.
It was the forest man’s instinct, too, that added the element of caution to his advance. That, and the utter stillness of the night. He broke no sticks under his feet. He disturbed the brush so quietly that it made no sound. When he came at last to the little open where Carvel’s fire was still sending a spiral of spruce-scented smoke up into the air it was with a stealth that failed even to rouse Baree. Perhaps, deep down in him, there smouldered an old suspicion; perhaps it was because he wanted to come to her while she was sleeping. The sight of the tepee made his heart throb faster. It was light as day where it stood in the moonlight, and he saw hanging outside it a few bits of woman’s apparel. He advanced soft-footed as a fox and stood a moment later with his hand on the cloth flap at the wigwam door, his head bent forward to catch the merest breath of sound. He could hear her breathing. For an instant his face turned so that the moonlight struck his eyes. They were aflame with a mad fire. Then, still very quietly, he drew aside the flap at the door.
It could not have been sound that roused Baree, hidden in the black balsam shadow a dozen paces away. Perhaps it was scent. His nostrils twitched first; then he awoke. For a few seconds his eyes glared at the bent figure in the tepee door. He knew that it was not Carvel. The old smell—the man-beast’s smell, filled his nostrils like a hated poison. He sprang to his feet and stood with his lips snarling back slowly from his long fangs. McTaggart had disappeared. From inside the tepee there came a sound; a sudden movement of bodies, a startled ejaculation of one awakening from sleep—and then a cry, a low, half-smothered, frightened cry, and in response to that cry Baree shot out from under the balsam with a sound in his throat that had in it the note of death.
In the edge of the spruce thicket Carvel rolled uneasily. Strange sounds were rousing him, cries that in his exhaustion came to him as if in a dream. At last he sat up, and then in sudden horror leaped to his feet and rushed toward the tepee. Nepeese was in the open, crying the name she had given him—“Ookimow Jeem—Ookimow—Jeem—Ookimow Jeem——” She was standing there white and slim, her eyes with the blaze of the stars in them, and when she saw Carvel she flung out her arms to him, still crying:
“Ookimow Jeem—Oo-oo, Ookimow Jeem——”
In the tepee he heard the rage of a beast, the moaning cries of a man. He forgot that it was only last night he had come, and with a cry he swept the Willow to his breast, and the Willow’s arms tightened round his neck as she moaned:
“Ookimow Jeem—it is the man-beast—in there! It is the man-beast from Lac Bain—and Baree——”
Truth flashed upon Carvel, and he caught Nepeese up in his arms and ran away with her from the sounds that had grown sickening and horrible. In the spruce thicket he put her feet once more to the ground. Her arms were still tight around his neck; he felt the wild terror of her body as it throbbed against him; her breath was sobbing, and her eyes were on his face. He drew her closer, and suddenly he crushed his face down close against hers and felt for an instant the warm thrill of her lips against his own. And he heard the whisper, soft and trembling.
“Ooo-oo,Ookimow Jeem——”
When Carvel returned to the fire, alone, his Colt in his hand, Baree was in front of the tepee waiting for him. Carvel picked up a burning brand and entered the wigwam. When he came out his face was white. He tossed the brand in the fire, and went back to Nepeese. He had wrapped her in his blankets, and now he knelt down beside her and put his arms about her.
“He is dead, Nepeese.”
“Dead, Ookimow Jeem?”
“Yes. Baree killed him.”
She did not seem to breathe. Gently, with his lips in her hair, Carvel whispered his plans for their paradise.
“No one will know, my sweetheart. To-night I will bury him and burn the tepee. To-morrow we will start for Nelson House, where there is a Missioner. And after that—we will come back—and I will build a new cabin where the old one burned.Do you love me, ka sakahet?”
“Oui—yes—Ookimow Jeem—I love you——”
Suddenly there came an interruption. Baree at last was giving his cry of triumph. It rose to the stars; it wailed over the roofs of the forests and filled the quiet skies—a wolfish howl of exultation, of achievement, of vengeance fulfilled. Its echoes died slowly away, and silence came again. A great peace whispered in the soft breath of the treetops. Out of the north came the mating call of a loon. About Carvel’s shoulders the Willow’s arms crept closer. And Carvel, out of his heart, thanked God.