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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
All that day Bush McTaggart followed a trail where Baree had left
traces of his presence. Trap after trap he found robbed. On the lake
he came upon the mangled wolf. From the first disturbing
excitement of his discovery of Baree’s presence his humour changed
slowly to one of rage, and his rage increased as the day dragged
out. He was not unacquainted with four-footed robbers of the trap-
line, but usually a wolf or a fox or a dog who had grown adept in
thievery troubled only a few traps. But in this case Baree was
travelling straight from trap to trap, and his footprints in the snow
showed that he stopped at each. There was, to McTaggart, almost a
human devilishness to his work. He evaded the poisons. Not once
did he stretch his head or paw within the danger zone of a deadfall.
For apparently no reason whatever he had destroyed a splendid
mink, whose glossy fur lay scattered in worthless bits over the snow.
Toward the end of the day McTaggart came to a deadfall in which a
lynx had died. Baree had torn the silvery flank of the animal until the
skin was of less than half value. McTaggart cursed aloud, and his
breath came hot.
At dusk he reached the shack Pierre Eustach had built midway of his
line, and took inventory of his fur. It was not more than a third of a
catch; the lynx was half ruined, a mink was torn completely in two.
The second day he found still greater ruin, still more barren traps.
He was like a madman. When he arrived at the second cabin, late in
the afternoon, Baree’s tracks were not an hour old in the snow.
Three times during the night he heard the dog howling.
The third day McTaggart did not return to Lac Bain, but began a
cautious hunt for Baree. An inch or two of fresh snow had fallen,
and as if to take even greater measure of vengeance from his man-
enemy Baree had left his footprints freely within a radius of a
hundred yards of the cabin. It was half an hour before McTaggart
could pick out the straight trail, and he followed this for two hours
into a thick banksian swamp. Baree kept with the wind. Now and
then he caught the scent of his pursuer; a dozen times he waited
until the other was so close he could hear the snap of brush, or the
metallic click of twigs against his rifle barrel. And then, with a
sudden inspiration that brought the curses afresh to McTaggart’s lips,
he swung in a wide circle and cut straight back for the trap-line.
When the Factor reached the line, along toward noon, Baree had
already begun his work. He had killed and eaten a rabbit; he had
robbed three traps in the distance of a mile, and he was headed
again straight over the trap-line for Post Lac Bain.
It was the fifth day that Bush McTaggart returned to his post. He
was in an ugly mood. Only Valence of the four Frenchmen was
there, and it was Valence who heard his story, and afterward heard
him cursing Marie. She came into the store a little later, big-eyed and
frightened, one of her cheeks flaming red where McTaggart had
struck her. While the storekeeper was getting her the canned salmon
McTaggart wanted for his dinner Valence found the opportunity to
whisper softly in her ear:
“M’sieu Lerue has trapped a silver fox,” he said with low triumph.
“He loves you, Mon ami, and he will have a splendid catch by spring
—and sends you this message from his cabin up on The Little Black
Bear With No Tail: Be ready to fly when the soft snows come!”
Marie did not look at him, but she heard, and her eyes shone so like
stars when the young storekeeper gave her the salmon that he said
to Valence, when she had gone:
“Blue Death, but she is still beautiful at times. Valence!”
To which Valence nodded with an odd smile.
 CHAPTER XXVI

By the middle of January the war between Baree and Bush

McTaggart had become more than an incident—more than a passing
adventure to the beast, and more than an irritating happening to the
man. It was, for the time, the elemental raison d’etre of their lives.
Baree hung to the trap-line. He haunted it like a devastating spectre,
and each time that he sniffed afresh the scent of the Factor from Lac
Bain he was impressed still more strongly with the instinct that he
was avenging himself upon a deadly enemy. Again and again he
outwitted McTaggart; he continued to strip his traps of their bait; the
humour grew in him more strongly to destroy the fur he came
across; his greatest pleasure came to be—not in eating—but in
destroying. The fires of his hatred burned fiercer as the weeks
passed, until at last he would snap and tear with his long fangs at
the snow where McTaggart’s feet had passed. And all of the time,
away back of his madness, there was a vision of Nepeese that
continued to grow more and more clearly in his brain. That first
Great Loneliness—the loneliness of the long days and longer nights
of his waiting and seeking on the Gray Loon, oppressed him again as
it had oppressed him in the early days of her loss. On starry or
moonlit nights he sent forth his wailing cries for her again, and Bush
McTaggart, listening to them in the middle of the night, felt strange
shivers run up his spine.
The man’s hatred was different than the beast’s, but perhaps even
more implacable. With McTaggart it was not hatred alone. There was
mixed with it an indefinable and superstitious fear, a thing he
laughed at, a thing he cursed at, but which clung to him as surely as
the scent of his trail clung to Baree’s nose. Baree no longer stood for
the animal alone; he stood for Nepeese. That was the thought that
insisted in growing in McTaggart’s ugly mind. Never a day passed
now that he did not think of the Willow; never a night came and
went without a visioning of her face. He even fancied, on a certain
night of storm, that he heard her voice out in the wailing of the wind
—and less than a minute later he heard faintly a distant howl out in
the forest. That night his heart was filled with a leaden dread. He
shook himself. He smoked his pipe until the cabin was blue. He
cursed Baree, and the storm—but there was no longer in him the
bullying courage of old. He had not ceased to hate Baree; he still
hated him as he had never hated a man, but he had an even greater
reason now for wanting to kill him. It came to him first in his sleep,
in a restless dream, and after that it lived, and lived—the thought
that the spirit of Nepeese was guiding Baree in the ravaging of his
trap-line!
After a time he ceased to talk at the Post about the Black Wolf that
was robbing his line. The furs damaged by Baree’s teeth he kept out
of sight, and to himself he kept his secret. He learned every trick
and scheme of the hunters who killed foxes and wolves along the
Barrens. He tried three different poisons, one so powerful that a
single drop of it meant death; he tried strychnine in gelatin capsules,
in deer fat, caribou fat, moose liver, and even in the flesh of
porcupine. At last, in preparing his poisons, he dipped his hands in
beaver oil before he handled the venoms and flesh so that there
could be no human smell. Foxes, wolves, and even the mink and
ermine died of these baits, but Baree came always so near—and no
nearer. In January McTaggart poisoned every bait in his trap-houses.
This produced at least one good result for him. From that day Baree
no longer touched his baits, but ate only the rabbits he killed in the
traps.
It was in January that McTaggart caught his first glimpse of Baree.
He had placed his rifle against a tree, and was a dozen feet away
from it at the time. It was as if Baree knew, and had come to taunt
him; for when the Factor suddenly looked up Baree was standing out
clear from the dwarf spruce not twenty yards away from him, his
white fangs gleaming and his eyes burning like coals. For a space
McTaggart stared as if turned into stone. It was Baree. He
recognized the white star, the white-tipped ear, and his heart
thumped like a hammer in his breast. Very slowly he began to creep
toward his rifle. His hand was reaching for it when like a flash Baree
was gone.
This gave McTaggart his new idea. He blazed himself a fresh trail
through the forests parallel with his trap-line but at least five
hundred yards distant from it. Wherever a trap or deadfall was set
this new trail struck sharply in, like the point of a V, so that he could
approach his line unobserved. By this strategy he believed that in
time he was sure of getting a shot at the dog. Again it was the man
who was reasoning, and again it was the man who was defeated.
The first day that McTaggart followed his new trail Baree also struck
that trail. For a little while it puzzled him. Three times he cut back
and forth between the old and the new trail. Then there was no
doubt. The new trail was the fresh trail, and he followed in the
footsteps of the Factor from Lac Bain. McTaggart did not know what
was happening until his return trip, when he saw the story told in
the snow. Baree had visited each trap, and without exception he had
approached each time at the point of the inverted V. After a week of
futile hunting, of lying in wait, of approaching at every point of the
wind—a period during which McTaggart had twenty times cursed
himself into fits of madness, another idea came to him. It was like
an inspiration, and so simple that it seemed almost inconceivable
that he had not thought of it before.
He hurried back to Post Lac Bain.
The second day after he was on the trail at dawn. This time he
carried a pack in which there were a dozen strong wolf traps freshly
dipped in beaver oil, and a rabbit which he had snared the previous
night. Now and then he looked anxiously at the sky. It was clear
until late in the afternoon, when banks of dark clouds began rolling
up from the east. Half an hour later a few flakes of snow began
falling. McTaggart let one of these drop on the back of his mittened
hand, and examined it closely. It was soft and downy, and he gave
vent to his satisfaction. It was what he wanted. Before morning
there would be six inches of freshly fallen snow covering the trails.
He stopped at the next trap-house and quickly set to work. First he
threw away the poisoned bait in the “house” and replaced it with the
rabbit. Then he began setting his wolf traps. Three of these he
placed close to the “door” of the house, through which Baree would
have to reach for the bait. The remaining nine he scattered at
intervals of a foot or sixteen inches apart, so that when he was done
a veritable cordon of traps guarded the house. He did not fasten the
chains, but let them lay loose in the snow. If Baree got into one trap
he would get into others and there would be no use of toggles. His
work done, McTaggart hurried on through the thickening twilight of
winter night to his shack. He was highly elated. This time there
could be no such thing as failure. He had sprung every trap on his
way from Lac Bain. In none of those traps would Baree find anything
to eat until he came to the “nest” of twelve wolf traps.
Seven inches of snow fell that night, and the whole world seemed
turned into a wonderful white robe. Like billows of feathers the snow
hung to the trees and shrubs; it gave tall white caps to the rocks,
and underfoot it was so light that a cartridge dropped from the hand
sank to the bottom of it. Baree was on the trap-line early. He was
more cautious this morning, for there was no longer the scent or
snowshoe track of McTaggart to guide him. He struck the first trap
about halfway between Lac Bain and the shack in which the Factor
was waiting. It was sprung, and there was no bait. Trap after trap he
visited, and all of them he found sprung, and all without bait. He
sniffed the air suspiciously, striving vainly to catch the tang of
smoke, a whiff of the man-smell. Along toward noon he came to the
“nest”—the twelve treacherous traps waiting for him with gaping
jaws half a foot under the blanket of snow. For a full minute he
stood well outside the danger line, sniffing the air, and listening. He
saw the rabbit, and his jaws closed with a hungry click. He moved a
step nearer. Still he was suspicious—for some strange and
inexplicable reason he sensed danger. Anxiously he sought for it with
his nose, his eyes, and his ears. And all about him there was a great
silence and a great peace. His jaws clicked again. He whined softly.
What was it stirring him? Where was the danger he could neither
see nor smell? Slowly he circled about the trap-house; three times
he circled round it, each circle drawing him a little nearer—until at
last his feet almost touched the outer cordon of traps. Another
minute he stood still; his ears flattened; in spite of the rich aroma of
the rabbit in his nostrils something was drawing him away. In
another moment he would have gone, but there came suddenly—
and from directly behind the trap-house—a fierce little rat-like
squeak, and the next instant Baree saw an ermine whiter than the
snow tearing hungrily at the flesh of the rabbit. He forgot his strange
premonition of danger. He growled fiercely, but his plucky little rival
did not budge from his feast.
And then he sprang straight into the “nest” that Bush McTaggart had
made for him.
 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 man was of 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
was travel-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? An outlaw?
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. An outlaw!” 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. To this man 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’s your
opinion? 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 have you
got 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 was Unekepesim, 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
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