Part 2 (1/2)

Where she fell was not ten feet from Baree. For a few moments he looked at the struggling ma.s.s of feathers in a daze, not quite comprehending that at last food was almost within his reach. Napanao was dying, but she still struggled convulsively with her wings. Baree rose stealthily, and after a moment in which he gathered all his remaining strength, he made a rush for her. His teeth sank into her breast--and not until then did he see Sekoosew. The ermine had raised his head from the death grip at the partridge's throat, and his savage little red eyes glared for a single instant into Baree's. Here was something too big to kill, and with an angry squeak the ermine was gone. Napanao's wings relaxed, and the throb went out of her body. She was dead. Baree hung on until he was sure. Then he began his feast.

With murder in his heart, Sekoosew hovered near, whisking here and there but never coming nearer than half a dozen feet from Baree. His eyes were redder than ever. Now and then he emitted a sharp little squeak of rage. Never had he been so angry in all his life! To have a fat partridge stolen from him like this was an imposition he had never suffered before. He wanted to dart in and fasten his teeth in Baree's jugular. But he was too good a general to make the attempt, too good a Napoleon to jump deliberately to his Waterloo. An owl he would have fought. He might even have given battle to his big brother--and his deadliest enemy--the mink. But in Baree he recognized the wolf breed, and he vented his spite at a distance. After a time his good sense returned, and he went off on another hunt.

Baree ate a third of the partridge, and the remaining two thirds he cached very carefully at the foot of the big spruce. Then he hurried down to the creek for a drink. The world looked very different to him now. After all, one's capacity for happiness depends largely on how deeply one has suffered. One's hard luck and misfortune form the measuring stick for future good luck and fortune. So it was with Baree.

Forty-eight hours ago a full stomach would not have made him a tenth part as happy as he was now. Then his greatest longing was for his mother. Since then a still greater yearning had come into his life--for food. In a way it was fortunate for him that he had almost died of exhaustion and starvation, for his experience had helped to make a man of him--or a wolf dog, just as you are of a mind to put it. He would miss his mother for a long time. But he would never miss her again as he had missed her yesterday and the day before.

That afternoon Baree took a long nap close to his cache. Then he uncovered the partridge and ate his supper. When his fourth night alone came, he did not hide himself as he had done on the three preceding nights. He was strangely and curiously alert. Under the moon and the stars he prowled in the edge of the forest and out on the burn. He listened with a new kind of thrill to the faraway cry of a wolf pack on the hunt. He listened to the ghostly whoo-whoo-whoo of the owls without s.h.i.+vering. Sounds and silences were beginning to hold a new and significant note for him.

For another day and night Baree remained in the vicinity of his cache.

When the last bone was picked, he moved on. He now entered a country where subsistence was no longer a perilous problem for him. It was a lynx country, and where there are lynx, there are also a great many rabbits. When the rabbits thin out, the lynx emigrate to better hunting grounds. As the snowshoe rabbit breeds all the summer through, Baree found himself in a land of plenty. It was not difficult for him to catch and kill the young rabbits. For a week he prospered and grew bigger and stronger each day. But all the time, stirred by that seeking, wanderl.u.s.t spirit--still hoping to find the old home and his mother--he traveled into the north and east.

And this was straight into the trapping country of Pierrot, the half-breed.

Pierrot, until two years ago, had believed himself to be one of the most fortunate men in the big wilderness. That was before La Mort Rouge--the Red Death--came. He was half French, and he had married a Cree chief's daughter, and in their log cabin on the Gray Loon they had lived for many years in great prosperity and happiness. Pierrot was proud of three things in this wild world of his. He was immensely proud of Wyola, his royal-blooded wife. He was proud of his daughter; and he was proud of his reputation as a hunter. Until the Red Death came, life was quite complete for him. It was then--two years ago--that the smallpox killed his princess wife. He still lived in the little cabin on the Gray Loon, but he was a different Pierrot. The heart was sick in him. It would have died, had it not been for Nepeese, his daughter. His wife had named her Nepeese, which means the Willow.

Nepeese had grown up like the willow, slender as a reed, with all her mother's wild beauty, and with a little of the French thrown in. She was sixteen, with great, dark, wonderful eyes, and hair so beautiful that an agent from Montreal pa.s.sing that way had once tried to buy it.

It fell in two s.h.i.+ning braids, each as big as a man's wrist, almost to her knees. ”Non, M'sieu,” Pierrot had said, a cold glitter in his eyes as he saw what was in the agent's face. ”It is not for barter.”

Two days after Baree had entered his trapping ground, Pierrot came in from the forests with a troubled look in his face.

”Something is killing off the young beavers,” he explained to Nepeese, speaking to her in French. ”It is a lynx or a wolf. Tomorrow--” He shrugged his thin shoulders, and smiled at her.

”We will go on the hunt,” laughed Nepeese happily, in her soft Cree.

When Pierrot smiled at her like that, and began with ”Tomorrow,” it always meant that she might go with him on the adventure he was contemplating.

Still another day later, at the end of the afternoon, Baree crossed the Gray Loon on a bridge of driftwood that had wedged between two trees.

This was to the north. Just beyond the driftwood bridge there was a small clearing, and on the edge of it Baree paused to enjoy the last of the setting sun. As he stood motionless and listening, his tail drooping low, his ears alert, his sharp-pointed nose sniffing the new country to the north, there was not a pair of eyes in the forest that would not have taken him for a young wolf.

From behind a clump of young balsams, a hundred yards away, Pierrot and Nepeese had watched him come over the driftwood bridge. Now was the time, and Pierrot leveled his rifle. It was not until then that Nepeese touched his arm softly. Her breath came a little excitedly as she whispered:

”Nootawe, let me shoot. I can kill him!”

With a low chuckle Pierrot gave the gun to her. He counted the whelp as already dead. For Nepeese, at that distance, could send a bullet into an inch square nine times out of ten. And Nepeese, aiming carefully at Baree, pressed steadily with her brown forefinger upon the trigger.

CHAPTER 5

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

Pierrot and Nepeese had stepped from behind the balsams, the Willow's beautiful eyes s.h.i.+ning with pride at the accuracy of her shot.

Instantly she caught her breath. Her brown fingers clutched at the barrel of her rifle. The chuckle of satisfaction died on Pierrot's lips as Baree's cries of pain filled the forest.

”Uchi moosis!” gasped Nepeese, in her Cree.

Pierrot caught the rifle from her.

”Diable! A dog--a puppy!” he cried.