Baree Son of Kazan Read online

  CHAPTER 3

  To Papayuchisew, after his first mouthful of water, the stream wasalmost as safe as the air, for he went sailing down it with thelightness of a gull, wondering in his slow-thinking big head why he wasmoving so swiftly and so pleasantly without any effort of his own.

  To Baree it was a different matter. He went down almost like a stone. Amighty roaring filled his ears; it was dark, suffocating, terrible. Inthe swift current he was twisted over and over. For a distance oftwenty feet he was under water. Then he rose to the surface anddesperately began using his legs. It was of little use. He had onlytime to blink once or twice and catch a lungful of air when he shotinto a current that was running like a millrace between the butts oftwo fallen trees, and for another twenty feet the sharpest eyes couldnot have seen hair or hide of him. He came up again at the edge of ashallow riffle over which the water ran like the rapids at Niagara inminiature, and for fifty or sixty yards he was flung along like a hairyball. From this he was hurled into a deep, cold pool. And then--halfdead--he found himself crawling out on a gravelly bar.

  For a long time Baree lay there in a pool of sunlight without moving.His ear hurt him; his nose was raw, and burned as if he had thrust itinto fire. His legs and body were sore, and as he began to wander alongthe gravel bar, he was quite probably the most wretched pup in theworld. He was also completely turned around. In vain he looked abouthim for some familiar mark--something that might guide him back to hiswindfall home. Everything was strange. He did not know that the waterhad flung him out on the wrong side of the stream, and that to reachthe windfall he would have to cross it again. He whined, but that wasas loud as his voice rose. Gray Wolf could have heard his barking, forthe windfall was not more than two hundred and fifty yards up thestream. But the wolf in Baree held him silent, except for his lowwhining.

  Striking the main shore, Baree began going downstream. This was awayfrom the windfall, and each step that he took carried him farther andfarther from home. Every little while he stopped and listened. Theforest was deeper. It was growing blacker and more mysterious. Itssilence was frightening. At the end of half an hour Baree would evenhave welcomed Papayuchisew. And he would not have fought him--he wouldhave inquired, if possible, the way back home.

  Baree was fully three-quarters of a mile from the windfall when he cameto a point where the creek split itself into two channels. He had butone choice to follow--the stream that flowed a little south and east.This stream did not run swiftly. It was not filled with shimmeringriffles, and rocks about which the water sang and foamed. It grewblack, like the forest. It was still and deep. Without knowing it,Baree was burying himself deeper and deeper into Tusoo's old trappinggrounds. Since Tusoo had died, they had lain undisturbed except for thewolves, for Gray Wolf and Kazan had not hunted on this side of thewaterway--and the wolves themselves preferred the more open country forthe chase.

  Suddenly Baree found himself at the edge of a deep, dark pool in whichthe water lay still as oil, and his heart nearly jumped out of his bodywhen a great, sleek, shining creature sprang out from almost under hisnose and landed with a tremendous splash in the center of it. It wasNekik, the otter.

  The otter had not heard Baree, and in another moment Napanekik, hiswife, came sailing out of a patch of gloom, and behind her came threelittle otters, leaving behind them four shimmering wakes in theoily-looking water. What happened after that made Baree forget for afew minutes that he was lost. Nekik had disappeared under the surface,and now he came up directly under his unsuspecting mate with a forcethat lifted her half out of the water. Instantly he was gone again, andNapanekik took after him fiercely. To Baree it did not look like play.Two of the baby otters had pitched on the third, which seemed to befighting desperately. The chill and ache went out of Baree's body. Hisblood ran excitedly. He forgot himself, and let out a bark. In a flashthe otters disappeared. For several minutes the water in the poolcontinued to rock and heave--and that was all. After a little, Bareedrew himself back into the bushes and went on.

  It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, and the sun should stillhave been well up in the sky. But it was growing darker steadily, andthe strangeness and fear of it all lent greater speed to Baree's legs.He stopped every little while to listen, and at one of these intervalshe heard a sound that drew from him a responsive and joyous whine. Itwas a distant howl--a wolf's howl--straight ahead of him. Baree was notthinking of wolves but of Kazan, and he ran through the gloom of theforest until he was winded. Then he stopped and listened a long time.The wolf howl did not come again. Instead of it there rolled up fromthe west a deep and thunderous rumble. Through the tree-tops thereflashed a vivid streak of lightning. A moaning whisper of wind rode inadvance of the storm. The thunder sounded nearer; and a second flash oflightning seemed searching Baree out where he stood shivering under acanopy of great spruce.

  This was his second storm. The first had frightened him terribly, andhe had crawled far back into the shelter of the windfall. The best hecould find now was a hollow under a big root, and into this he slunk,crying softly. It was a babyish cry, a cry for his mother, for home,for warmth, for something soft and protecting to nestle up to. And ashe cried, the storm burst over the forest.

  Baree had never before heard so much noise, and he had never seen thelightning play in such sheets of fire as when this June deluge fell. Itseemed at times as though the whole world were aflame, and the earthseemed to shake and roll under the crashes of the thunder. He ceasedhis crying and made himself as small as he could under the root, whichprotected him partly from the terrific beat of the rain which came downthrough the treetops in a flood. It was now so black that except whenthe lightning ripped great holes in the gloom he could not see thespruce trunks twenty feet away. Twice that distance from Baree therewas a huge dead stub that stood out like a ghost each time the firesswept the sky, as if defying the flaming hands up there to strike--andstrike, at last, one of them did! A bluish tongue of snapping flame randown the old stub; and as it touched the earth, there came a tremendousexplosion above the treetops. The massive stub shivered, and then itbroke asunder as if cloven by a gigantic ax. It crashed down so closeto Baree that earth and sticks flew about him, and he let out a wildyelp of terror as he tried to crowd himself deeper into the shallowhole under the root.

  With the destruction of the old stub the thunder and lightning seemedto have vented their malevolence. The thunder passed on into the southand east like the rolling of ten thousand heavy cart wheels over theroofs of the forest, and the lightning went with it. The rain fellsteadily. The hole in which he had taken shelter was partly filled withwater. He was drenched. His teeth chattered as he waited for the nextthing to happen.

  It was a long wait. When the rain finally stopped, and the sky cleared,it was night. Through the tops of the trees Baree could have seen thestars if he had poked out his head and looked upward. But he clung tohis hole. Hour after hour passed. Exhausted, half drowned, footsore,and hungry, he did not move. At last he fell into a troubled sleep, asleep in which every now and then he cried softly and forlornly for hismother. When he ventured out from under the root it was morning, andthe sun was shining.

  At first Baree could hardly stand. His legs were cramped. Every bone inhis body seemed out of joint. His ear was stiff where the blood hadoozed out of it and hardened, and when he tried to wrinkle his woundednose, he gave a sharp little yap of pain. If such a thing werepossible, he looked even worse than he felt. His hair had dried inmuddy patches; he was dirt-stained from end to end; and where yesterdayhe had been plump and shiny, he was now as thin and wretched asmisfortune could possibly make him. And he was hungry. He had neverbefore known what it meant to be really hungry.

  When he went on, continuing in the direction he had been followingyesterday, he slunk along in a disheartened sort of way. His head andears were no longer alert, and his curiosity was gone. He was not onlystomach hungry: mother hunger rose above his physical yearning forsomething to eat. He wanted his mother as he had never wanted her
before in his life. He wanted to snuggle his shivering little bodyclose up to her and feel the warm caressing of her tongue and listen tothe mothering whine of her voice. And he wanted Kazan, and the oldwindfall, and that big blue spot that was in the sky right over it. Ashe followed again along the edge of the creek, he whimpered for them asa child might grieve.

  The forest grew more open after a time, and this cheered him up alittle. Also the warmth of the sun was taking the ache out of his body.But he grew hungrier and hungrier. He always had depended entirely onKazan and Gray Wolf for food. His parents had, in some ways, made agreat baby of him. Gray Wolf's blindness accounted for this, for sincehis birth she had not taken up her hunting with Kazan, and it was quitenatural that Baree should stick close to her, though more than once hehad been filled with a great yearning to follow his father. Nature washard at work trying to overcome its handicap now. It was struggling toimpress on Baree that the time had now come when he must seek his ownfood. The fact impinged itself upon him slowly but steadily, and hebegan to think of the three or four shellfish he had caught anddevoured on the stony creek bar near the windfall. He also rememberedthe open clamshell he had found, and the lusciousness of the tendermorsel inside it. A new excitement began to possess him. He became, allat once, a hunter.

  With the thinning out of the forest the creek grew more shallow. It ranagain over bars of sand and stones, and Baree began to nose along theedge of the shallows. For a long time he had no success. The fewcrayfish that he saw were exceedingly lively and elusive, and all theclamshells were shut so tight that even Kazan's powerful jaws wouldhave had difficulty in smashing them. It was almost noon when he caughthis first crayfish, about as big as a man's forefinger. He devoured itravenously. The taste of food gave him fresh courage. He caught twomore crayfish during the afternoon. It was almost dusk when he stirreda young rabbit out from under a cover of grass. If he had been a montholder, he could have caught it. He was still very hungry, for threecrayfish--scattered through the day--had not done much to fill theemptiness that was growing steadily in him.

  With the approach of night Baree's fears and great loneliness returned.Before the day had quite gone he found soft bed of sand. Since hisfight with Papayuchisew, he had traveled a long distance, and the rockunder which he made his bed this night was at least eight or nine milesfrom the windfall. It was in the open of the creek bottom, with andwhen the moon rose, and the stars filled the sky, Baree could look outand see the water of the stream shimmering in a glow almost as brightas day. Directly in front of him, running to the water's edge, was abroad carpet of white sand. Across this sand, half an hour later, camea huge black bear.

  Until Baree had seen the otters at play in the creek, his conceptionsof the forests had not gone beyond his own kind, and such creatures asowls and rabbits and small feathered things. The otters had notfrightened him, because he still measured things by size, and Nekik wasnot half as big as Kazan. But the bear was a monster beside which Kazanwould have stood a mere pygmy. He was big. If nature was taking thisway of introducing Baree to the fact that there were more importantcreatures in the forests than dogs and wolves and owls and crayfish,she was driving the point home with a little more than necessaryemphasis. For Wakayoo, the bear, weighed six hundred pounds if heweighed an ounce. He was fat and sleek from a month's feasting on fish.His shiny coat was like black velvet in the moonlight, and he walkedwith a curious rolling motion with his head hung low. The horror grewwhen he stopped broadside in the carpet of sand not more than ten feetfrom the rock under which Baree was shivering.

  It was quite evident that Wakayoo had caught scent of him in the air.Baree could hear him sniff--could hear his breathing--caught thestarlight flashing in his reddish-brown eyes as they swung suspiciouslytoward the big boulder. If Baree could have known then that he--hisinsignificant little self--was making that monster actually nervous anduneasy, he would have given a yelp of joy. For Wakayoo, in spite of hissize, was somewhat of a coward when it came to wolves. And Bareecarried the wolf scent. It grew stronger in Wakayoo's nose; and justthen, as if to increase whatever nervousness was growing in him, therecame from out of the forest behind him a long and wailing howl.

  With an audible grunt, Wakayoo moved on. Wolves were pests, he argued.They wouldn't stand up and fight. They'd snap and yap at one's heelsfor hours at a time, and were always out of the way quicker than a winkwhen one turned on them. What was the use of hanging around where therewere wolves, on a beautiful night like this? He lumbered on decisively.Baree could hear him splashing heavily through the water of the creek.Not until then did the wolf dog draw a full breath. It was almost agasp.

  But the excitement was not over for the night. Baree had chosen his bedat a place where the animals came down to drink, and where they crossedfrom one of the creek forests to the other. Not long after the bear haddisappeared he heard a heavy crunching in the sand, and hoofs rattlingagainst stones, and a bull moose with a huge sweep of antlers passedthrough the open space in the moonlight. Baree stared with poppingeyes, for if Wakayoo had weighed six hundred pounds, this giganticcreature whose legs were so long that it seemed to be walking on stiltsweighed at least twice as much. A cow moose followed, and then a calf.

  The calf seemed all legs. It was too much for Baree, and he shovedhimself farther and farther back under the rock until he lay wedged inlike a sardine in a box. And there he lay until morning.