Baree Son of Kazan Read online

  CHAPTER 4

  When Baree ventured forth from under his rock at the beginning of thenext day, he was a much older puppy than when he met Papayuchisew, theyoung owl, in his path near the old windfall. If experience can be madeto take the place of age, he had aged a great deal in the lastforty-eight hours. In fact, he had passed almost out of puppyhood. Heawoke with a new and much broader conception of the world. It was a bigplace. It was filled with many things, of which Kazan and Gray Wolfwere not the most important. The monsters he had seen on the moonlitplot of sand had roused in him a new kind of caution, and the onegreatest instinct of beasts--the primal understanding that it is thestrong that prey upon the weak--was wakening swiftly in him. As yet hequite naturally measured brute force and the menace of things by sizealone. Thus the bear was more terrible than Kazan, and the moose wasmore terrible than the bear.

  It was quite fortunate for Baree that this instinct did not go to thelimit in the beginning and make him understand that his own breed--thewolf--was most feared of all the creatures, claw, hoof, and wing, ofthe forests. Otherwise, like the small boy who thinks he can swimbefore he has mastered a stroke, he might somewhere have jumped inbeyond his depth and had his head chewed off.

  Very much alert, with the hair standing up along his spine, and alittle growl in his throat, Baree smelled of the big footprints made bythe bear and the moose. It was the bear scent that made him growl. Hefollowed the tracks to the edge of the creek. After that he resumed hiswandering, and also his hunt for food.

  For two hours he did not find a crayfish. Then he came out of the greentimber into the edge of a burned-over country. Here everything wasblack. The stumps of the trees stood up like huge charred canes. It wasa comparatively fresh "burn" of last autumn, and the ash was still softunder Baree's feet. Straight through this black region ran the creek,and over it hung a blue sky in which the sun was shining. It was quiteinviting to Baree. The fox, the wolf, the moose, and the caribou wouldhave turned back from the edge of this dead country. In another year itwould be good hunting ground, but now it was lifeless. Even the owlswould have found nothing to eat out there.

  It was the blue sky and the sun and the softness of the earth under hisfeet that lured Baree. It was pleasant to travel in after his painfulexperiences in the forest. He continued to follow the stream, thoughthere was now little possibility of his finding anything to eat. Thewater had become sluggish and dark. The channel was choked with charreddebris that had fallen into it when the forest had burned, and itsshores were soft and muddy. After a time, when Baree stopped and lookedabout him, he could no longer see the green timber he had left. He wasalone in that desolate wilderness of charred tree corpses. It was asstill as death, too. Not the chirp of a bird broke the silence. In thesoft ash he could not hear the fall of his own feet. But he was notfrightened. There was the assurance of safety here.

  If he could only find something to eat! That was the master thoughtthat possessed Baree. Instinct had not yet impressed upon him that thiswhich he saw all about him was starvation. He went on, seekinghopefully for food. But at last, as the hours passed, hope began to diein him. The sun sank westward. The sky grew less blue; a low wind beganto ride over the tops of the stubs, and now and then one of them fellwith a startling crash.

  Baree could go no farther. An hour before dusk he lay down in the open,weak and starved. The sun disappeared behind the forest. The moonrolled up from the east. The sky glittered with stars--and all throughthe night Baree lay as if dead. When morning came, he dragged himselfto the stream for a drink. With his last strength he went on. It wasthe wolf urging him--compelling him to struggle to the last for hislife. The dog in him wanted to lie down and die. But the wolf spark inhim burned stronger. In the end it won. Half a mile farther on he cameagain to the green timber.

  In the forests as well as in the great cities fate plays its changingand whimsical hand. If Baree had dragged himself into the timber halfan hour later he would have died. He was too far gone now to hunt forcrayfish or kill the weakest bird. But he came just as Sekoosew, theermine, the most bloodthirsty little pirate of all the wild--was makinga kill.

  That was fully a hundred yards from where Baree lay stretched out undera spruce, almost ready to give up the ghost. Sekoosew was a mightyhunter of his kind. His body was about seven inches long, with a tinyblack-tipped tail appended to it, and he weighed perhaps five ounces. Ababy's fingers could have encircled him anywhere between his four legs,and his little sharp-pointed head with its beady red eyes could slipeasily through a hole an inch in diameter. For several centuriesSekoosew had helped to make history. It was he--when his pelt was wortha hundred dollars in king's gold--that lured the first shipload ofgentlemen adventurers over the sea, with Prince Rupert at their head.It was little Sekoosew who was responsible for the forming of the greatHudson's Bay Company and the discovery of half a continent. For almostthree centuries he had fought his fight for existence with the trapper.And now, though he was no longer worth his weight in yellow gold, hewas the cleverest, the fiercest, and the most merciless of all thecreatures that made up his world.

  As Baree lay under his tree, Sekoosew was creeping on his prey. Hisgame was a big fat spruce hen standing under a thicket of black currantbushes. The ear of no living thing could have heard Sekoosew'smovement. He was like a shadow--a gray dot here, a flash there, nowhidden behind a stick no larger than a man's wrist, appearing for amoment, the next instant gone as completely as if he had not existed.Thus he approached from fifty feet to within three feet of the sprucehen. That was his favorite striking distance. Unerringly he launchedhimself at the drowsy partridge's throat, and his needlelike teeth sankthrough feathers into flesh.

  Sekoosew was prepared for what happened then. It always happened whenhe attacked Napanao, the wood partridge. Her wings were powerful, andher first instinct when he struck was always that of flight. She rosestraight up now with a great thunder of wings. Sekoosew hung tight, histeeth buried deep in her throat, and his tiny, sharp claws clinging toher like hands. Through the air he whizzed with her, biting deeper anddeeper, until a hundred yards from where that terrible death thing hadfastened to her throat, Napanao crashed again to earth.

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

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

  Baree ate a third of the partridge, and the remaining two thirds hecached very carefully at the foot of the big spruce. Then he hurrieddown to the creek for a drink. The world looked very different to himnow. After all, one's capacity for happiness depends largely on howdeeply one has suffered. One's hard luck and misfortune form themeasuring stick for future good luck and fortune. So it was with
Baree.Forty-eight hours ago a full stomach would not have made him a tenthpart as happy as he was now. Then his greatest longing was for hismother. Since then a still greater yearning had come into his life--forfood. In a way it was fortunate for him that he had almost died ofexhaustion and starvation, for his experience had helped to make a manof him--or a wolf dog, just as you are of a mind to put it. He wouldmiss his mother for a long time. But he would never miss her again ashe had missed her yesterday and the day before.

  That afternoon Baree took a long nap close to his cache. Then heuncovered the partridge and ate his supper. When his fourth night alonecame, he did not hide himself as he had done on the three precedingnights. He was strangely and curiously alert. Under the moon and thestars he prowled in the edge of the forest and out on the burn. Helistened with a new kind of thrill to the faraway cry of a wolf pack onthe hunt. He listened to the ghostly whoo-whoo-whoo of the owls withoutshivering. Sounds and silences were beginning to hold a new andsignificant note for him.

  For another day and night Baree remained in the vicinity of his cache.When the last bone was picked, he moved on. He now entered a countrywhere subsistence was no longer a perilous problem for him. It was alynx country, and where there are lynx, there are also a great manyrabbits. When the rabbits thin out, the lynx emigrate to better huntinggrounds. As the snowshoe rabbit breeds all the summer through, Bareefound himself in a land of plenty. It was not difficult for him tocatch and kill the young rabbits. For a week he prospered and grewbigger and stronger each day. But all the time, stirred by thatseeking, wanderlust spirit--still hoping to find the old home and hismother--he traveled into the north and east.

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

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

  Nepeese had grown up like the willow, slender as a reed, with all hermother's wild beauty, and with a little of the French thrown in. Shewas sixteen, with great, dark, wonderful eyes, and hair so beautifulthat an agent from Montreal passing that way had once tried to buy it.It fell in two shining braids, each as big as a man's wrist, almost toher knees. "Non, M'sieu," Pierrot had said, a cold glitter in his eyesas he saw what was in the agent's face. "It is not for barter."

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

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

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

  When Pierrot smiled at her like that, and began with "Tomorrow," italways meant that she might go with him on the adventure he wascontemplating.

  Still another day later, at the end of the afternoon, Baree crossed theGray Loon on a bridge of driftwood that had wedged between two trees.This was to the north. Just beyond the driftwood bridge there was asmall clearing, and on the edge of it Baree paused to enjoy the last ofthe setting sun. As he stood motionless and listening, his taildrooping low, his ears alert, his sharp-pointed nose sniffing the newcountry to the north, there was not a pair of eyes in the forest thatwould not have taken him for a young wolf.

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

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

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