CHAPTER 13
From the window, her face screened by the folds of the curtain which she had made for it, the Willow could see what happened outside. She was not smiling now. She was breathing quickly, and her body was tense. Bush McTaggart paused not a dozen feet from the window and shook hands with Pierrot, her father. She heard McTaggart's coarse voice, his boisterous greeting, and then she saw him showing Pierrot what he carried under his arm. There came to her distinctly his explanation of how he had caught his captive in a rabbit snare. He unwrapped the blanket. Nepeese gave a cry of amazement. In an instant she was out beside them. She did not look at McTaggart's red face, blazing in its joy and exultation.
"It is Baree!" she cried.
She took the bundle from McTaggart and turned to Pierrot.
"Tell him that Baree belongs to me," she said.
She hurried into the cabin. McTaggart looked after her, stunned and amazed. Then he looked at Pierrot. A man half blind could have seen that Pierrot was as amazed as he.
Nepeese had not spoken to him—the factor of Lac Bain! She had not LOOKED at him! And she had taken the dog from him with as little concern as though he had been a wooden man. The red in his face deepened as he stared from Pierrot to the door through which she had gone, and which she had closed behind her.
On the floor of the cabin Nepeese dropped on her knees and finished unwrapping the blanket. She was not afraid of Baree. She had forgotten McTaggart. And then, as Baree rolled in a limp heap on the floor, she saw his half-closed eyes and the dry blood on his jaws, and the light left her face as swiftly as the sun is shadowed by a cloud. "Baree," she cried softly. "Baree—Baree!"
She partly lifted him in her two hands. Baree's head sagged. His body was numbed until he was powerless to move. His legs were without feeling. He could scarcely see. But he heard her voice! It was the same voice that had come to him that day he had felt the sting of the bullet, the voice that had pleaded with him under the rock!
The voice of the Willow thrilled Baree. It seemed to stir the sluggish blood in his veins, and he opened his eyes wider and saw again the wonderful stars that had glowed at him so softly the day of Wakayoo's death. One of the Willow's long braids fell over her shoulder, and he smelled again the sweet scent of her hair as her hand caressed him and her voice talked to him. Then she got up suddenly and left him, and he did not move while he waited for her. In a moment she was back with a basin of water and a cloth. Gently she washed the blood from his eyes and mouth. And still Baree made no move. He scarcely breathed. But Nepeese saw the little quivers that shot through his body when her hand touched him, like electric shocks.
"He beat you with a club," she was saying, her dark eyes within a foot of Baree's. "He beat you! That man-beast!"
There came an interruption. The door opened, and the man-beast stood looking down on them, a grin on his red face. Instantly Baree showed that he was alive. He sprang back from under the Willow's hand with a sudden snarl and faced McTaggart. The hair of his spine stood up like a brush; his fangs gleamed menacingly, and his eyes burned like living coals.
"There is a devil in him," said McTaggart. "He is wild—born of the wolf. You must be careful or he will take off a hand, kit sakahet." It was the first time he had called her that lover's name in Cree—SWEETHEART! Her heart pounded. She bent her head for a moment over her clenched hands, and McTaggart—looking down on what he thought was her confusion—laid his hand caressingly on her hair. From the door Pierrot had heard the word, and now he saw the caress, and he raised a hand as if to shut out the sight of a sacrilege.
"Mon Dieu!" he breathed.
In the next instant he had given a sharp cry of wonder that mingled with a sudden yell of pain from McTaggart. Like a flash Baree had darted across the floor and fastened his teeth in the factor's leg. They had bitten deep before McTaggart freed himself with a powerful kick. With an oath he snatched his revolver from its holster. The Willow was ahead of him. With a little cry she darted to Baree and caught him in her arms. As she looked up at McTaggart, her soft, bare throat was within a few inches of Baree's naked fangs. Her eyes blazed.
"You beat him!" she cried. "He hates you—hates you—"
"Let him go!" called Pierrot in an agony of fear.
"Mon Dieu! I say let him go, or he will tear the life from you!"
"He hates you—hates you—hates you—" the Willow was repeating over and over again into McTaggart's startled face. Then suddenly she turned to her father. "No, he will not tear the life from me," she cried. "See! It is Baree. Did I not tell you that? It is Baree! Is it not proof that he defended me—"
"From me!" gasped McTaggart, his face darkening.
Pierrot advanced and laid a hand on McTaggart's arm. He was smiling.
"Let us leave them to fight it out between themselves, m'sieu," he said. "They are two little firebrands, and we are not safe. If she is bitten—"
He shrugged his shoulders. A great load had been lifted from them suddenly. His voice was soft and persuasive. And now the anger had gone out of the Willow's face. A coquettish uplift of her eyes caught McTaggart, and she looked straight at him half smiling, as she spoke to her father:
"I will join you soon, mon pere—you and M'sieu the Factor from Lac Bain!"
There were undeniable little devils in her eyes, McTaggart thought—little devils laughing full at him as she spoke, setting his brain afire and his blood to throbbing wildly. Those eyes—full of dancing witches! How he would take pleasure in taming them—very soon now! He followed Pierrot outside. In his exultation he no longer felt the smart of Baree's teeth.
"I will show you my new cariole that I have made for winter, m'sieu," said Pierrot as the door closed behind them.
Half an hour later Nepeese came out of the cabin. She could see that Pierrot and the factor had been talking about something that had not been pleasant to her father. His face was strained. She caught in his eyes the smolder of fire which he was trying to smother, as one might smother flames under a blanket. McTaggart's jaws were set, but his eyes lighted up with pleasure when he saw her. She knew what it was about. The factor from Lac Bain had been demanding his answer of Pierrot, and Pierrot had been telling him what she had insisted upon—that he must come to her. And he was coming! She turned with a quick beating of the heart and hurried down a little path. She heard McTaggart's footsteps behind her, and threw the flash of a smile over her shoulder. But her teeth were set tight. The nails of her fingers were cutting into the palms of her hands.
Pierrot stood without moving. He watched them as they disappeared into the edge of the forest, Nepeese still a few steps ahead of McTaggart. Out of his breast rose a sharp breath.
"Par les milles cornes du diable!" he swore softly. "Is it possible—that she smiles from her heart at that beast? Non! It is impossible. And yet—if it is so—"
One of his brown hands tightened convulsively about the handle of the knife in his belt, and slowly he began to follow them.
McTaggart did not hurry to overtake Nepeese. She was following the narrow path deeper into the forest, and he was glad of that. They would be alone—away from Pierrot. He was ten steps behind her, and again the Willow smiled at him over her shoulder. Her body moved sinuously and swiftly. She was keeping accurate measurement of the distance between them—but McTaggart did not guess that this was why she looked back every now and then. He was satisfied to let her go on. When she turned from the narrow trail into a side path that scarcely bore the mark of travel, his heart gave an exultant jump. If she kept on, he would very soon have her alone—a good distance from the cabin. The blood ran hot in his face. He did not speak to her, through fear that she would stop. Ahead of them he heard the rumble of water. It was the creek running through the chasm.
Nepeese was making straight for that sound. With a little laugh she started to run, and when she stood at the edge of the chasm, McTaggart was fully fifty yards behind her. Twenty feet sheer down there was a deep pool between the rock walls, a pool so deep that the water was the color of blue ink. She turned to face the factor from Lac Bain. He had never looked more like a red beast to her. Until this moment she had been unafraid. But now—in an instant—he terrified her. Before she could speak what she had planned to say, he was at her side, and had taken her face between his two great hands, his coarse fingers twining in the silken strands of her thick braids where they fell over her shoulders at the neck.
"Ka sakahet!" he cried passionately. "Pierrot said you would have an answer for me. But I need no answer now. You are mine! Mine!"
She gave a cry. It was a gasping, broken cry. His arms were about her like bands of iron, crushing her slender body, shutting off her breath, turning the world almost black before her eyes. She could neither struggle nor cry out. She felt the hot passion of his lips on her face, heard his voice—and then came a moment's freedom, and air into her strangled lungs. Pierrot was calling! He had come to the fork in the trail, and he was calling the Willow's name!
McTaggart's hot hand came over her mouth.
"Don't answer," she heard him say.
Strength—anger—hatred flared up in her, and fiercely she struck the hand down. Something in her wonderful eyes held McTaggart. They blazed into his very soul.
"Bete noir!" she panted at him, freeing herself from the last touch of his hands. "Beast—black beast!" Her voice trembled, and her face flamed. "See—I came to show you my pool—and tell you what you wanted to hear—and you—you—have crushed me like a beast—like a great rock— See! down there—it is my pool!"
She had not planned it like this. She had intended to be smiling, even laughing, in this moment. But McTaggart had spoiled them—her carefully made plans! And yet, as she pointed, the factor from Lac Bain looked for an instant over the edge of the chasm. And then she laughed—laughed as she gave him a sudden shove from behind.
"And that is my answer, M'sieu le Facteur from Lac Bain!" she cried tauntingly as he plunged headlong into the deep pool between the rock walls.
CHAPTER 14
From the edge of the open Pierrot saw what had happened, and he gave a great gasp of horror. He drew back among the balsams. This was not a moment for him to show himself. While his heart drummed like a hammer, his face was filled with joy.
On her hands and knees the Willow was peering over the edge. Bush McTaggart had disappeared. He had gone down like the great clod he was. The water of her pool had closed over him with a dull splash that was like a chuckle of triumph. He appeared now, beating out with his arms and legs to keep himself afloat, while the Willow's voice came to him in taunting cries.
"Bete noir! Bete noir! Beast! Beast—"
Savagely she flung small sticks and tufts of earth down at him; and McTaggart, looking up as he gained his equilibrium, saw her leaning so far over that she seemed almost about to fall. Her long braids hung down into the chasm, gleaming in the sun. Her eyes were laughing while her lips taunted him. He could see the flash of her white teeth.
"Beast! Beast!"
He began swimming, still looking up at her. It was a hundred yards down the slow-going current to the beach of shale where he could climb out, and a half of that distance she followed him, laughing and taunting him, and flinging down sticks and pebbles. He noted that none of the sticks or stones was large enough to hurt him. When at last his feet touched bottom, she was gone.
Swiftly Nepeese ran back over the trail, and almost into Pierrot's arms. She was panting and laughing when for a moment she stopped.
"I have given him the answer, Nootawe! He is in the pool!"
Into the balsams she disappeared like a bird. Pierrot made no effort to stop her or to follow.
"Tonnerre de Dieu," he chuckled—and cut straight across for the other trail.
Nepeese was out of breath when she reached the cabin. Baree, fastened to a table leg by a babiche thong, heard her pause for a moment at the door. Then she entered and came straight to him. During the half-hour of her absence Baree had scarcely moved. That half-hour, and the few minutes that had preceded it, had made tremendous impressions upon him. Nature, heredity, and instinct were at work, clashing and readjusting, impinging on him a new intelligence—the beginning of a new understanding. A swift and savage impulse had made him leap at Bush McTaggart when the factor put his hand on the Willow's head. It was not reason. It was a hearkening back of the dog to that day long ago when Kazan, his father, had lulled the man-brute in the tent, the man-brute who had dared to molest Thorpe's wife, whom Kazan worshiped. Then it had been the dog—and the woman.
And here again it was the woman. She had appealed to the great hidden passion that was in Baree and that had come to him from Kazan. Of all the living things in the world, he knew that he must not hurt this creature that appeared to him through the door. He trembled as she knelt before him again, and up through the years came the wild and glorious surge of Kazan's blood, overwhelming the wolf, submerging the savagery of his birth—and with his head flat on the floor he whined softly, and WAGGED HIS TAIL.
Nepeese gave a cry of joy.
"Baree!" she whispered, taking his head in her hands. "Baree!"
Her touch thrilled him. It sent little throbs through his body, a tremulous quivering which she could feel and which deepened the glow in her eyes. Gently her hand stroked his head and his back. It seemed to Nepeese that he did not breathe. Under the caress of her hand his eyes closed. In another moment she was talking to him, and at the sound of her voice his eyes shot open.
"He will come here—that beast—and he will kill us," she was saying. "He will kill you because you bit him, Baree. Ugh, I wish you were bigger, and stronger, so that you could take off his head for me!"
She was untying the babiche from about the table leg, and under her breath she laughed. She was not frightened. It was a tremendous adventure—and she throbbed with exultation at the thought of having beaten the man-beast in her own way. She could see him in the pool struggling and beating about like a great fish. He was just about crawling out of the chasm now—and she laughed again as she caught Baree up under her arm.
"Oh—oopi-nao—but you are heavy!" she gasped, "And yet I must carry you—because I am going to run!"
She hurried outside. Pierrot had not come, and she darted swiftly into the balsams back of the cabin, with Baree hung in the crook of her arm, like a sack filled at both ends and tied in the middle. He felt like that, too. But he still had no inclination to wriggle himself free. Nepeese ran with him until her arm ached. Then she stopped and put him down on his feet, holding to the end of the caribou-skin thong that was tied about his neck. She was prepared for any lunge he might make to escape. She expected that he would make an attempt, and for a few moments she watched him closely, while Baree, with his feet on earth once more, looked about him. And then the Willow spoke to him softly.
"You are not going to run away, Baree. Non, you are going to stay with me, and we will kill that man-beast if he dares do to me again what he did back there." She flung back the loose hair from about her flushed face, and for a moment she forgot Baree as she thought of that half-minute at the edge of the chasm. He was looking straight up at her when her glance fell on him again. "Non, you are not going to run away—you are going to follow me," she whispered. "Come."
The babiche string tightened about Baree's neck as she urged him to follow. It was like another rabbit snare, and he braced his forefeet and bared his fangs just a little. The Willow did not pull. Fearlessly she put her hand on his head again. From the direction of the cabin came a shout, and at the sound of it she took Baree up under her arm once more.
"Bete noir—bete noir!" she called back tauntingly, but only loud enough to be heard a few yards away. "Go back to Lac Bain—owases—you wild beast!"
Nepeese began to make her way swiftly through the forest. It grew deeper and darker, and there were no trails. Three times in the next half-hour she stopped to put Baree down and rest her arm. Each time she pleaded with him coaxingly to follow her. The second and third times Baree wriggled and wagged his tail, but beyond those demonstrations of his satisfaction with the turn his affairs had taken he would not go. When the string tightened around his neck, he braced himself; once he growled—again he snapped viciously at the babiche. So Nepeese continued to carry him.
They came at last into a clearing. It was a tiny meadow in the heart of the forest, not more than three or four times as big as the cabin. Underfoot the grass was soft and green, and thickly strewn with flowers. Straight through the heart of this little oasis trickled a streamlet across which the Willow jumped with Baree under her arm, and on the edge of the rill was a small wigwam made of freshly cut spruce and balsam boughs. Into her diminutive mekewap the Willow thrust her head to see that things were as she had left them yesterday. Then, with a long breath of relief, she put down her four-legged burden and fastened the end of the babiche to one of the cut spruce limbs.
Baree burrowed himself back into the wall of the wigwam, and with head alert—and eyes wide open—watched his companion attentively. Not a movement of the Willow escaped him. She was radiant—and happy. Her laugh, sweet and wild as a bird's trill, set Baree's heart throbbing with a desire to jump about with her among the flowers.
For a time Nepeese seemed to forget Baree. Her wild blood raced with the joy of her triumph over the factor from Lac Bain. She saw him again, floundering about in the pool—pictured him at the cabin now, soaked and angry, demanding of mon pere where she had gone. And mon pere, with a shrug of his shoulders, was telling him that he didn't know—that probably she had run off into the forest. It did not enter into her head that in tricking Bush McTaggart in that way she was playing with dynamite. She did not foresee the peril that in an instant would have stamped the wild flush from her face and curdled the blood in her veins—she did not guess that McTaggart had become for her a deadlier menace than ever.
Nepeese knew that he must be angry. But what had she to fear? Mon pere would be angry, too, if she told him what had happened at the edge of the chasm. But she would not tell him. He might kill the man from Lac Bain. A factor was great. But Pierrot, her father, was greater. It was an unlimited faith in her, born of her mother. Perhaps even now Pierrot was sending him back to Lac Bain, telling him that his business was there. But she would not return to the cabin to see. She would wait here. Mon pere would understand—and he knew where to find her when the man was gone. But it would have been such fun to throw sticks at him as he went!
After a little Nepeese returned to Baree. She brought him water and gave him a piece of raw fish. For hours they were alone, and with each hour there grew stronger in Baree the desire to follow the girl in every movement she made, to crawl close to her when she sat down, to feel the touch of her dress, of her hand—and to hear her voice. But he did not show this desire. He was still a little savage of the forests—a four-footed barbarian born half of a wolf and half of a dog; and he lay still. With Umisk he would have played. With Oohoomisew he would have fought. At Bush McTaggart he would have bared his fangs, and buried them deep when the chance came. But the girl was different. Like the Kazan of old, he had begun to worship. If the Willow had freed Baree, he would not have run away. If she had left him, he would possibly have followed her—at a distance. His eyes were never away from her. He watched her build a small fire and cook a piece of the fish. He watched her eat her dinner.
It was quite late in the afternoon when she came and sat down close to him, with her lap full of flowers which she twined in the long, shining braids of her hair. Then, playfully, she began beating Baree with the end of one of these braids. He shrank under the soft blows, and with that low, birdlike laughter in her throat, Nepeese drew his head into her lap where the scatter of flowers lay. She talked to him. Her hand stroked his head. Then it remained still, so near that he wanted to thrust out his warm red tongue and caress it. He breathed in the flower-scented perfume of it—and lay as if dead. It was a glorious moment. Nepeese, looking down on him, could not see that he was breathing.
There came an interruption. It was the snapping of a dry stick. Through the forest Pierrot had come with the stealth of a cat, and when they looked up, he stood at the edge of the open. Baree knew that it was not Bush McTaggart. But it was a man-beast! Instantly his body stiffened under the Willow's hand. He drew back slowly and cautiously from her lap, and as Pierrot advanced, Baree snarled. The next instant Nepeese had risen and had run to Pierrot. The look in her father's face alarmed her.
"What has happened, mon pere?" she cried.
Pierrot shrugged his shoulders.
"Nothing, ma Nepeese—except that you have roused a thousand devils in the heart of the factor from Lac Barn, and that—"
He stopped as he saw Baree, and pointed at him.
"Last night when M'sieu the Factor caught him in a snare, he bit m'sieu's hand. M'sieu's hand is swollen twice its size, and I can see his blood turning black. It is pechipoo."
"Pechipoo!" gasped Nepeese.
She looked into Pierrot's eyes. They were dark, and filled with a sinister gleam—a flash of exultation, she thought.
"Yes, it is the blood poison," said Pierrot. A gleam of cunning shot into his eyes as he looked over his shoulder, and nodded. "I have hidden the medicine—and told him there is no time to lose in getting back to Lac Bain. And he is afraid—that devil! He is waiting. With that blackening hand, he is afraid to start back alone—and so I go with him. And—listen, ma Nepeese. We will be away by sundown, and there is something you must know before I go."
Baree saw them there, close together in the shadows thrown by the tall spruce trees. He heard the low murmur of their voices—chiefly of Pierrot's, and at last he saw Nepeese put her two arms up around the man-beast's neck, and then Pierrot went away again into the forest. He thought that the Willow would never turn her face toward him after that. For a long time she stood looking in the direction which Pierrot had taken. And when after a time she turned and came back to Baree, she did not look like the Nepeese who had been twining flowers in her hair. The laughter was gone from her face and eyes. She knelt down beside him and with sudden fierceness she cried:
"It is pechipoo, Baree! It was you—you—who put the poison in his blood. And I hope he dies! For I am afraid—afraid!"
She shivered.
Perhaps it was in this moment that the Great Spirit of things meant Baree to understand—that at last it was given him to comprehend that his day had dawned, that the rising and the setting of his sun no longer existed in the sky but in this girl whose hand rested on his head. He whined softly, and inch by inch he dragged himself nearer to her until again his head rested in the hollow of her lap.
CHAPTER 15
For a long time after Pierrot left them the Willow did not move from the spot where she had seated herself beside Baree. It was at last the deepening shadows and a low rumble in the sky that roused her from the fear of the things Pierrot had told her. When she looked up, black clouds were massing slowly over the open space above the spruce tops. Darkness was falling. In the whisper of the wind and the dead stillness of the thickening gloom there was the sullen brewing of storm. Tonight there would be no glorious sunset. There would be no twilight hour in which to follow the trail, no moon, no stars—and unless Pierrot and the factor were already on their way, they would not start in the face of the pitch blackness that would soon shroud the forest.
Nepeese shivered and rose to her feet. For the first time Baree got up, and he stood close at her side. Above them a flash of lightning cut the clouds like a knife of fire, followed in an instant by a terrific crash of thunder. Baree shrank back as if struck a blow. He would have slunk into the shelter of the brush wall of the wigwam, but there was something about the Willow as he looked at her which gave him confidence. The thunder crashed again. But he retreated no farther. His eyes were fixed on Nepeese.
She stood straight and slim in that gathering gloom riven by the lightning, her beautiful head thrown back, her lips parted, and her eyes glowing with an almost eager anticipation—a sculptured goddess welcoming with bated breath the onrushing forces of the heavens. Perhaps it was because she was born during a night of storm. Many times Pierrot and the dead princess mother had told her that—how on the night she had come into the world the crash of thunder and the flare of lightning had made the hours an inferno, how the streams had burst over their banks and the stems of ten thousand forest trees had snapped in its fury—and the beat of the deluge on their cabin roof had drowned the sound of her mother's pain, and of her own first babyish cries.
On that night, it may be, the Spirit of Storm was born in Nepeese. She loved to face it, as she was facing it now. It made her forget all things but the splendid might of nature. Her half-wild soul thrilled to the crash and fire of it. Often she had reached up her bare arms and laughed with joy as the deluge burst about her. Even now she might have stood there in the little open until the rain fell, if a whine from Baree had not caused her to turn. As the first big drops struck with the dull thud of leaden bullets about them, she went with him into the balsam shelter.
Once before Baree had passed through a night of terrible storm—the night he had hidden himself under a root and had seen the tree riven by lightning; but now he had company, and the warmth and soft pressure of the Willow's hand on his head and neck filled him with a strange courage. He growled softly at the crashing thunder. He wanted to snap at the lightning flashes. Under her hand Nepeese felt the stiffening of his body, and in a moment of uncanny stillness she heard the sharp, uneasy click of his teeth. Then the rain fell.
It was not like other rains Baree had known. It was an inundation sweeping down out of the blackness of the skies. Within five minutes the interior of the balsam shelter was a shower bath. After half an hour of that torrential downpour, Nepeese was soaked to the skin. The water ran in little rivulets down her body. It trickled in tiny streams from her drenched braids and dropped from her long lashes, and the blanket under her became wet as a mop. To Baree it was almost as bad as his near-drowning in the stream after his fight with Papayuchisew, and he snuggled closer and closer under the sheltering arm of the Willow. It seemed an interminable time before the thunder rolled far to the east, and the lightning died away into distant and intermittent flashings. Even after that the rain fell for another hour. Then it stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
With a laughing gasp Nepeese rose to her feet. The water gurgled in her moccasins as she walked out into the open. She paid no attention to Baree—and he followed her. Across the open in the treetops the last of the storm clouds were drifting away. A star shone—then another; and the Willow stood watching them as they appeared until there were so many she could not count. It was no longer black. A wonderful starlight flooded the open after the inky gloom of the storm.
Nepeese looked down and saw Baree. He was standing quietly and unleashed, with freedom on all sides of him. Yet he did not run. He was waiting, wet as a water rat, with his eyes fixed on her expectantly. Nepeese made a movement toward him, and hesitated.
"No, you will not run away, Baree. I will leave you free. And now we must have a fire!"
A fire! Anyone but Pierrot might have said that she was crazy. Not a stem or twig in the forest that was not dripping! They could hear the trickle of running water all about them.
"A fire," she said again. "Let us hunt for the wuskisi, Baree."
With her wet clothes clinging to her lightly, she was like a slim shadow as she crossed the soggy clearing and lost herself among the forest trees. Baree still followed. She went straight to a birch tree that she had located that day and began tearing off the loose bark. An armful of this bark she carried close to the wigwam, and on it she heaped load after load of wet wood until she had a great pile. From a bottle in the wigwam she secured a dry match, and at the first touch of its tiny flame the birch bark flared up like paper soaked in oil. Half an hour later the Willow's fire—if there had been no forest walls to hide it—could have been seen at the cabin a mile away. Not until it was blazing a dozen feet into the air did she cease piling wood on it. Then she drove sticks into the soft ground and over these sticks she stretched the blanket out to dry.
So their first night passed—storm, the cool, deep pool, the big fire; and later, when the Willow's clothes and the blanket had dried, a few hours' sleep. At dawn they returned to the cabin. It was a cautious approach. There was no smoke coming from the chimney. The door was closed. Pierrot and Bush McTaggart were gone.
CHAPTER 16
It was the beginning of August—the Flying-up Moon—when Pierrot returned from Lac Bain, and in three days more it would be the Willow's seventeenth birthday. He brought back with him many things for Nepeese—ribbons for her hair, real shoes, which she wore at times like the two Englishwomen at Nelson House, and chief glory of all, some wonderful red cloth for a dress. In the three winters she had spent at the mission these women had made much of Nepeese. They had taught her to sew as well as to spell and read and pray, and at times there came to the Willow a compelling desire to do as they did.
So for three days Nepeese worked hard on her new dress and on her birthday she stood before Pierrot in a fashion that took his breath away. She had piled her hair in great coils on the crown of her head, as Yvonne, the younger of the Englishwomen, had taught her, and in the rich jet of it had half buried a vivid sprig of the crimson fireflower. Under this, and the glow in her eyes, and the red flush of her lips and cheeks came the wonderful red dress, fitted to the slim and sinuous beauty of her form—as the style had been two winters ago at Nelson House. And below the dress, which reached just below the knees—Nepeese had quite forgotten the proper length, or else her material had run out—came the coup de maitre of her toilet, real stockings and the gay shoes with high heels! She was a vision before which the gods of the forests might have felt their hearts stop beating. Pierrot turned her round and round without a word, but smiling. When she left him, however, followed by Baree, and limping a little because of the tightness of her shoes, the smile faded from his face, leaving it cold and bleak.
"Mon Dieu," he whispered to himself in French, with a thought that was like a sharp stab at his heart, "she is not of her mother's blood—non. It is French. She is—yes—like an angel."
A change had come over Pierrot. During the three days she had been engaged in her dressmaking, Nepeese had been quite too excited to notice this change, and Pierrot had tried to keep it from her. He had been away ten days on the trip to Lac Bain, and he brought back to Nepeese the joyous news that M'sieu McTaggart was very sick with pechipoo—the blood poison—news that made the Willow clap her hands and laugh happily. But he knew that the factor would get well, and that he would come again to their cabin on the Gray Loon. And when next time he came—
It was while he was thinking of this that his face grew cold and hard, and his eyes burned. And he was thinking of it on this her birthday, even as her laughter floated to him like a song. Dieu, in spite of her seventeen years, she was nothing but a child—a baby! She could not guess his horrible visions. And the dread of awakening her for all time from that beautiful childhood kept him from telling her the whole truth so that she might have understood fully and completely. Non, it should not be that. His soul beat with a great and gentle love. He, Pierrot Du Quesne, would do the watching. And she should laugh and sing and play—and have no share in the black forebodings that had come to spoil his life.
On this day there came up from the south MacDonald, the government map maker. He was gray and grizzled, with a great, free laugh and a clean heart. Two days he remained with Pierrot. He told Nepeese of his daughters at home, of their mother, whom he worshiped more than anything else on earth—and before he went on in his quest of the last timber line of Banksian pine, he took pictures of the Willow as he had first seen her on her birthday: her hair piled in glossy coils, her red dress, the high-heeled shoes. He carried the negatives on with him, promising Pierrot that he would get a picture back in some way. Thus fate works in its strange and apparently innocent ways as it spins its webs of tragedy.
For many weeks after MacDonald's visit there followed tranquil days on the Gray Loon. They were wonderful days for Baree. At first he was suspicious of Pierrot. After a little he tolerated him, and at last accepted him as a part of the cabin—and Nepeese. It was the Willow whose shadow he became. Pierrot noted the attachment with the deepest satisfaction.
"Ah, in a few months more, if he should leap at the throat of M'sieu the Factor," he said to himself one day.
In September, when he was six months old, Baree was almost as large as Gray Wolf—big-boned, long-fanged, with a deep chest, and jaws that could already crack a bone as if it were a stick. He was with Nepeese whenever and wherever she moved. They swam together in the two pools—the pool in the forest and the pool between the chasm walls. At first it alarmed Baree to see Nepeese dive from the rock wall over which she had pushed McTaggart, but at the end of a month she had taught him to plunge after her through that twenty feet of space.
It was late in August when Baree saw the first of his kind outside of Kazan and Gray Wolf. During the summer Pierrot allowed his dogs to run at large on a small island in the center of a lake two or three miles away, and twice a week he netted fish for them. On one of these trips Nepeese accompanied him and took Baree with her. Pierrot carried his long caribou-gut whip. He expected a fight. But there was none. Baree joined the pack in their rush for fish, and ate with them. This pleased Pierrot more than ever.
"He will make a great sledge dog," he chuckled. "It is best to leave him for a week with the pack, ma Nepeese."
Reluctantly Nepeese gave her consent. While the dogs were still at their fish, they started homeward. Their canoe had slipped away before Baree discovered the trick they had played on him. Instantly he leaped into the water and swam after them—and the Willow helped him into his canoe.
Early in September a passing Indian brought Pierrot word of Bush McTaggart. The factor had been very sick. He had almost died from the blood poison, but he was well now. With the first exhilarating tang of autumn in the air a new dread oppressed Pierrot. But at present he said nothing of what was in his mind to Nepeese. The Willow had almost forgotten the factor from Lac Bain, for the glory and thrill of wilderness autumn was in her blood. She went on long trips with Pierrot, helping him to blaze out the new trap lines that would be used when the first snows came, and on these journeys she was always accompanied by Baree.
Most of Nepeese's spare hours she spent in training him for the sledge. She began with a babiche string and a stick. It was a whole day before she could induce Baree to drag this stick without turning at every other step to snap and growl at it. Then she fastened another length of babiche to him, and made him drag two sticks. Thus little by little she trained him to the sledge harness, until at the end of a fortnight he was tugging heroically at anything she had a mind to fasten him to. Pierrot brought home two of the dogs from the island, and Baree was put into training with these, and helped to drag the empty sledge. Nepeese was delighted. On the day the first light snow fell she clapped her hands and cried to Pierrot:
"By midwinter I will have him the finest dog in the pack, mon pere!"
This was the time for Pierrot to say what was in his mind. He smiled. Diantre—would not that beast the factor fall into the very devil of a rage when he found how he had been cheated! And yet—
He tried to make his voice quiet and commonplace.
"I am going to send you down to the school at Nelson House again this winter, ma cherie," he said. "Baree will help draw you down on the first good snow."
The Willow was tying a knot in Baree's babiche, and she rose slowly to her feet and looked at Pierrot. Her eyes were big and dark and steady.
"I am not going, mon pere!"
It was the first time Nepeese had ever said that to Pierrot—in just that way. It thrilled him. And he could scarcely face the look in her eyes. He was not good at bluffing. She saw what was in his face; it seemed to him that she was reading what was in his mind, and that she grew a little taller as she stood there. Certainly her breath came quicker, and he could see the throb of her breast. Nepeese did not wait for him to gather speech.
"I am not going!" she repeated with even greater finality, and bent again over Baree.
With a shrug of his shoulders Pierrot watched her. After all, was he not glad? Would his heart not have turned sick if she had been happy at the thought of leaving him? He moved to her side and with great gentleness laid a hand on her glossy head. Up from under it the Willow smiled at him. Between them they heard the click of Baree's jaws as he rested his muzzle on the Willow's arm. For the first time in weeks the world seemed suddenly filled with sunshine for Pierrot. When he went back to the cabin he held his head higher. Nepeese would not leave him! He laughed softly. He rubbed his hands together. His fear of the factor from Lac Bain was gone. From the cabin door he looked back at Nepeese and Baree.
"The Saints be blessed!" he murmured. "Now—now—it is Pierrot Du Quesne who knows what to do!"
CHAPTER 17
Back to Lac Bain, late in September, came MacDonald the map maker. For ten days Gregson, the investigating agent, had been Bush McTaggart's guest at the Post, and twice in that time it had come into Marie's mind to creep upon him while he slept and kill him. The factor himself paid little attention to her now, a fact which would have made her happy if it had not been for Gregson. He was enraptured with the wild, sinuous beauty of the Cree girl, and McTaggart, without jealousy, encouraged him. He was tired of Marie.
McTaggart told Gregson this. He wanted to get rid of her, and if he—Gregson—could possibly take her along with him it would be a great favor. He explained why. A little later, when the deep snows came, he was going to bring the daughter of Pierrot Du Quesne to the Post. In the rottenness of their brotherhood he told of his visit, of the manner of his reception, and of the incident at the chasm. In spite of all this, he assured Gregson, Pierrot's girl would soon be at Lac Bain.
It was at this time that MacDonald came. He remained only one night, and without knowing that he was adding fuel to a fire already dangerously blazing, he gave the photograph he had taken of Nepeese to the factor. It was a splendid picture.
"If you can get it down to that girl some day I'll be mightily obliged," he said to McTaggart. "I promised her one. Her father's name is Du Quesne—Pierrot Du Quesne. You probably know them. And the girl—"
His blood warmed as he described to McTaggart how beautiful she was that day in her red dress, which appeared black in the photograph. He did not guess how near McTaggart's blood was to the boiling point.
The next day MacDonald started for Norway House. McTaggart did not show Gregson the picture. He kept it to himself and at night, under the glow of his lamp, he looked at it with thoughts that filled him with a growing resolution. There was but one way. The scheme had been in his mind for weeks—and the picture determined him. He dared not whisper his secret even to Gregson. But it was the one way. It would give him Nepeese. Only—he must wait for the deep snows, the midwinter snows. They buried their tragedies deepest.
McTaggart was glad when Gregson followed the map maker to Norway House. Out of courtesy he accompanied him a day's journey on his way. When he returned to the Post, Marie was gone. He was glad. He sent off a runner with a load of presents for her people, and the message: "Don't beat her. Keep her. She is free."
Along with the bustle and stir of the beginning of the trapping season McTaggart began to prepare his house for the coming of Nepeese. He knew what she liked in the way of cleanliness and a few other things. He had the log walls painted white with the lead and oil that were intended for his York boats. Certain partitions were torn down, and new ones were built. The Indian wife of his chief runner made curtains for the windows, and he confiscated a small phonograph that should have gone on to Lac la Biche. He had no doubts, and he counted the days as they passed.
Down on the Gray Loon Pierrot and Nepeese were busy at many things, so busy that at times Pierrot's fears of the factor at Lac Bain were almost forgotten, and they slipped out of the Willow's mind entirely. It was the Red Moon, and both thrilled with the anticipation and excitement of the winter hunt. Nepeese carefully dipped a hundred traps in boiling caribou fat mixed with beaver grease, while Pierrot made fresh deadfalls ready for setting on his trails. When he was gone more than a day from the cabin, she was always with him.
But at the cabin there was much to do, for Pierrot, like all his Northern brotherhood, did not begin to prepare until the keen tang of autumn was in the air. There were snowshoes to be rewebbed with new babiche; there was wood to be cut in readiness for the winter storms. The cabin had to be banked, a new harness made, skinning knives sharpened and winter moccasins to be manufactured—a hundred and one affairs to be attended to, even to the repairing of the meat rack at the back of the cabin, where, from the beginning of cold weather until the end, would hang the haunches of deer, caribou, and moose for the family larder and, when fish were scarce, the dogs' rations.
In the bustle of all these preparations Nepeese was compelled to give less attention to Baree than she had during the preceding weeks. They did not play so much; they no longer swam, for with the mornings there was deep frost on the ground, and the water was turning icy cold. They no longer wandered deep in the forest after flowers and berries. For hours at a time Baree would now lie at the Willow's feet, watching her slender fingers as they weaved swiftly in and out with her snowshoe babiche. And now and then Nepeese would pause to lean over and put her hand on his head, and talk to him for a moment—sometimes in her soft Cree, sometimes in English or her father's French.
It was the Willow's voice which Baree had learned to understand, and the movement of her lips, her gestures, the poise of her body, the changing moods which brought shadow or sunlight into her face. He knew what it meant when she smiled. He would shake himself, and often jump about her in sympathetic rejoicing, when she laughed. Her happiness was such a part of him that a stern word from her was worse than a blow. Twice Pierrot had struck him, and twice Baree had leaped back and faced him with bared fangs and an angry snarl, the crest along his back standing up like a brush. Had one of the other dogs done this, Pierrot would have half-killed him. It would have been mutiny, and the man must be master. But Baree was always safe. A touch of the Willow's hand, a word from her lips, and the crest slowly settled and the snarl went out of his throat.
Pierrot was not at all displeased.
"Dieu. I will never go so far as to try and whip that out of him," he told himself. "He is a barbarian—a wild beast—and her slave. For her he would kill!"
So it turned out, through Pierrot himself—and without telling his reason for it—that Baree did not become a sledge dog. He was allowed his freedom, and was never tied, like the others. Nepeese was glad, but did not guess the thought that was in Pierrot's mind. To himself Pierrot chuckled. She would never know why he kept Baree always suspicious of him, even to the point of hating him.
It required considerable skill and cunning on his part. With himself he reasoned:
"If I make him hate me, he will hate all men. Mey-oo! That is good."
So he looked into the future—for Nepeese.
Now the tonic-filled days and cold, frosty nights of the Red Moon brought about the big change in Baree. It was inevitable. Pierrot knew that it would come, and the first night that Baree settled back on his haunches and howled up at the Red Moon, Pierrot prepared Nepeese for it.
"He is a wild dog, ma Nepeese," he said to her. "He is half wolf, and the Call will come to him strong. He will go into the forests. He will disappear at times. But we must not fasten him. He will come back. Ka, he will come back!" And he rubbed his hands in the moonglow until his knuckles cracked.
The Call came to Baree like a thief entering slowly and cautiously into a forbidden place. He did not understand it at first. It made him nervous and uneasy, so restless that Nepeese frequently heard him whine softly in his sleep. He was waiting for something. What was it? Pierrot knew, and smiled in his inscrutable way.
And then it came. It was night, a glorious night filled with moon and stars, under which the earth was whitening with a film of frost, when they heard the first hunt call of the wolves. Now and then during the summer there had come the lone wolf howl, but this was the tonguing of the pack; and as it floated through the vast silence and mystery of the night, a song of savagery that had come with each Red Moon down through unending ages, Pierrot knew that at last had come that for which Baree had been waiting.
In an instant Baree had sensed it. His muscles grew taut as pieces of stretched rope as he stood up in the moonlight, facing the direction from which floated the mystery and thrill of the sound. They could hear him whining softly; and Pierrot, bending down so that he caught the light of the night properly, could see him trembling.
"It is Mee-Koo!" he said in a whisper to Nepeese.
That was it, the call of the blood that was running swift in Baree's veins—not alone the call of his species, but the call of Kazan and Gray Wolf and of his forbears for generations unnumbered. It was the voice of his people. So Pierrot had whispered, and he was right. In the golden night the Willow was waiting, for it was she who had gambled most, and it was she who must lose or win. She uttered no sound, replied not to the low voice of Pierrot, but held her breath and watched Baree as he slowly faded away, step by step, into the shadows. In a few moments more he was gone. It was then that she stood straight, and flung back her head, with eyes that glowed in rivalry with the stars.
"Baree!" she called. "Baree! Baree! Baree!"
He must have been near the edge of the forest, for she had drawn a slow, waiting breath or two before he was and he whined up into her face. Nepeese put her hands to his head.
"You are right, mon pere," she said. "He will go to the wolves, but he will come back. He will never leave me for long." With one hand still on Baree's head, she pointed with the other into the pitlike blackness of the forest. "Go to them, Baree!" she whispered. "But you must come back. You must. Cheamao!"
With Pierrot she went into the cabin; the door closed silence. In it he could hear the soft night sounds: the clinking of the chains to which the dogs were fastened, the restless movement of their bodies, the throbbing whir of a pair of wings, the breath of the night itself. For to him this night, even in its stillness, seemed alive. Again he went into it, and close to the forest once more he stopped to listen. The wind had turned, and on it rode the wailing, blood-thrilling cry of the pack. Far off to the west a lone wolf turned his muzzle to the sky and answered that gathering call of his clan. And then out of the east came a voice, so far beyond the cabin that it was like an echo dying away in the vastness of the night.
A choking note gathered in Baree's throat. He threw up his head. Straight above him was the Red Moon, inviting him to the thrill and mystery of the open world.
The sound grew in his throat, and slowly it rose in volume until his answer was rising to the stars. In their cabin Pierrot and the Willow heard it. Pierrot shrugged his shoulders.
"He is gone," he said.
"Oui, he is gone, mon pere" replied Nepeese, peering through the window.