Baree Son of Kazan Read online

  CHAPTER 5

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

  Pierrot and Nepeese had stepped from behind the balsams, the Willow'sbeautiful eyes shining with pride at the accuracy of her shot.Instantly she caught her breath. Her brown fingers clutched at thebarrel of her rifle. The chuckle of satisfaction died on Pierrot's lipsas Baree's cries of pain filled the forest.

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

  Pierrot caught the rifle from her.

  "Diable! A dog--a puppy!" he cried.

  He started on a run for Baree. But in their amazement they had lost afew seconds and Baree's dazed senses were returning. He saw themclearly as they came across the open--a new kind of monster of theforests! With a final wail he darted back into the deep shadows of thetrees. It was almost sunset, and he ran for the thick gloom of theheavy spruce near the creek. He had shivered at sight of the bear andthe moose, but for the first time he now sensed the real meaning ofdanger. And it was close after him. He could hear the crashing of thetwo-legged beasts in pursuit; strange cries were almost at hisheels--and then suddenly he plunged without warning into a hole.

  It was a shock to have the earth go out from under his feet like that,but Baree did not yelp. The wolf was dominant in him again. It urgedhim to remain where he was, making no move, no sound--scarcelybreathing. The voices were over him; the strange feet almost stumbledin the hole where he lay. Looking out of his dark hiding place, hecould see one of his enemies. It was Nepeese, the Willow. She wasstanding so that a last glow of the day fell upon her face. Baree didnot take his eyes from her.

  Above his pain there rose in him a strange and thrilling fascination.The girl put her two hands to her mouth and in a voice that was softand plaintive and amazingly comforting to his terrified little heart,cried:

  "Uchimoo--Uchimoo--Uchimoo!"

  And then he heard another voice; and this voice, too, was far lessterrible than many sounds he had listened to in the forests.

  "We cannot find him, Nepeese," the voice was saying. "He has crawledoff to die. It is too bad. Come."

  Where Baree had stood in the edge of the open Pierrot paused andpointed to a birch sapling that had been cut clean off by the Willow'sbullet. Nepeese understood. The sapling, no larger than her thumb, hadturned her shot a trifle and had saved Baree from instant death. Sheturned again, and called:

  "Uchimoo--Uchimoo--Uchimoo!"

  Her eyes were no longer filled with the thrill of slaughter.

  "He would not understand that," said Pierrot, leading the way acrossthe open. "He is wild--born of the wolves. Perhaps he was of Koomo'slead bitch, who ran away to hunt with the packs last winter."

  "And he will die--"

  "Ayetun--yes, he will die."

  But Baree had no idea of dying. He was too tough a youngster to beshocked to death by a bullet passing through the soft flesh of hisforeleg. That was what had happened. His leg was torn to the bone, butthe bone itself was untouched. He waited until the moon had risenbefore he crawled out of his hole.

  His leg had grown stiff, but it had stopped bleeding, though his wholebody was racked by a terrible pain. A dozen Papayuchisews, all holdingright to his ears and nose, could not have hurt him more. Every time hemoved, a sharp twinge shot through him; and yet he persisted in moving.Instinctively he felt that by traveling away from the hole he would getaway from danger. This was the best thing that could have happened tohim, for a little later a porcupine came wandering along, chattering toitself in its foolish, good-humored way, and fell with a fat thud intothe hole. Had Baree remained, he would have been so full of quills thathe must surely have died.

  In another way the exercise of travel was good for Baree. It gave hiswound no opportunity to "set," as Pierrot would have said, for inreality his hurt was more painful than serious. For the first hundredyards he hobbled along on three legs, and after that he found that hecould use his fourth by humoring it a great deal. He followed the creekfor a half mile. Whenever a bit of brush touched his wound, he wouldsnap at it viciously, and instead of whimpering when he felt one of thesharp twinges shooting through him, an angry little growl gathered inhis throat, and his teeth clicked. Now that he was out of the hole, theeffect of the Willow's shot was stirring every drop of wolf blood inhis body. In him there was a growing animosity--a feeling of rage notagainst any one thing in particular, but against all things. It was notthe feeling with which he had fought Papayuchisew, the young owl. Onthis night the dog in him had disappeared. An accumulation ofmisfortunes had descended upon him, and out of these misfortunes--andhis present hurt--the wolf had risen savage and vengeful.

  This was the first time Baree had traveled at night. He was, for thetime, unafraid of anything that might creep up on him out of thedarkness. The blackest shadows had lost their terror. It was the firstbig fight between the two natures that were born in him--the wolf andthe dog--and the dog was vanquished. Now and then he stopped to lickhis wound, and as he licked it he growled, as though for the hurtitself he held a personal antagonism. If Pierrot could have seen andheard, he would have understood very quickly, and he would have said:"Let him die. The club will never take that devil out of him."

  In this humor Baree came, an hour later, out of the heavy timber of thecreek bottom into the more open spaces of a small plain that ran alongthe foot of a ridge. It was in this plain that Oohoomisew hunted.Oohoomisew was a huge snow owl. He was the patriarch among all the owlsof Pierrot's trapping domain. He was so old that he was almost blind,and therefore he never hunted as other owls hunted. He did not hidehimself in the black cover of spruce and balsam tops, or float softlythrough the night, ready in an instant to swoop down upon his prey. Hiseyesight was so poor that from a spruce top he could not have seen arabbit at all, and he might have mistaken a fox for a mouse.

  So old Oohoomisew, learning wisdom from experience, hunted from ambush.He would squat on the ground, and for hours at a time he would remainthere without making a sound and scarcely moving a feather, waitingwith the patience of Job for something to eat to come his way. Now andthen he had made mistakes. Twice he had mistaken a lynx for a rabbit,and in the second attack he had lost a foot, so that when he slumberedaloft during the day he clung to his perch with one claw. Crippled,nearly blind, and so old that he had long ago lost the tufts offeathers over his ears, he was still a giant in strength, and when hewas angry, one could hear the snap of his beak twenty yards away.

  For three nights he had been unlucky, and tonight he had beenparticularly unfortunate. Two rabbits had come his way, and he hadlunged at each of them from his cover. The first he had missedentirely; the second had left with him a mouthful of fur--and that wasall. He was ravenously hungry, and he was gritting his bill in his badtemper when he heard Baree approaching.

  Even if Baree could have seen under the dark bush ahead, and haddiscovered Oohoomisew ready to dart from his ambush, it is not likelythat he would have gone very far aside. His own fighting blood was up.He, too, was ready for war.

  Very indistinctly Oohoomisew saw him at last, coming across the littleopen space which he was watching. He squatted down. His feathersruffled up until he was like a ball. His almost sightless eyes glowedlike two bluish pools of fire. Ten feet away, Baree stopped for amoment and licked his wound. Oohoomisew waited cautiously. Again Bareeadvanced, passing within six feet of the bush. With a swift hop and asudden thunder of his powerful wings the great owl was upon him.

  This time Baree let out no cry of pain or of fright. The wolf iskipichi-mao, as the Indians say. No hunter ever heard a trapped wolfwhine for mercy at the sting of a bullet or the beat of a
club. He dieswith his fangs bared. Tonight it was a wolf whelp that Oohoomisew wasattacking, and not a dog pup. The owl's first rush keeled Baree over,and for a moment he was smothered under the huge, outspread wings,while Oohoomisew--pinioning him down--hopped for a claw hold with hisone good foot, and struck fiercely with his beak.

  One blow of that beak anywhere about the head would have settled for arabbit, but at the first thrust Oohoomisew discovered that it was not arabbit he was holding under his wings. A bloodcurdling snarl answeredthe blow, and Oohoomisew remembered the lynx, his lost foot, and hisnarrow escape with his life. The old pirate might have beaten aretreat, but Baree was no longer the puppyish Baree of that hour inwhich he had fought young Papayuchisew. Experience and hardship hadaged and strengthened him. His jaws had passed quickly from thebone-licking to the bone-cracking age--and before Oohoomisew could getaway, if he was thinking of flight at all, Baree's fangs closed with avicious snap on his one good leg.

  In the stillness of night there rose a still greater thunder of wings,and for a few moments Baree closed his eyes to keep from being blindedby Oohoomisew's furious blows. But he hung on grimly, and as his teethmet through the flesh of the old night-pirate's leg, his angry snarlcarried defiance to Oohoomisew's ears. Rare good fortune had given himthat grip on the leg, and Baree knew that triumph or defeat depended onhis ability to hold it. The old owl had no other claw to sink into him,and it was impossible--caught as he was--for him to tear at Baree withhis beak. So he continued to beat that thunder of blows with hisfour-foot wings.

  The wings made a great tumult about Baree, but they did not hurt him.He buried his fangs deeper. His snarls rose more fiercely as he got thetaste of Oohoomisew's blood, and through him there surged more hotlythe desire to kill this monster of the night, as though in the death ofthis creature he had the opportunity of avenging himself for all thehurts and hardships that had befallen him since he had lost his mother.

  Oohoomisew had never felt a great fear until now. The lynx had snappedat him but once--and was gone, leaving him crippled. But the lynx hadnot snarled in that wolfish way, and it had not hung on. A thousand andone nights Oohoomisew had listened to the wolf howl. Instinct had toldhim what it meant. He had seen the packs pass swiftly through thenight, and always when they passed he had kept in the deepest shadows.To him, as for all other wild things, the wolf howl stood for death.But until now, with Baree's fangs buried in his leg, he had neversensed fully the wolf fear. It had taken it years to enter into hisslow, stupid head--but now that it was there, it possessed him as noother thing had ever possessed him in all his life.

  Suddenly Oohoomisew ceased his beating and launched himself upward.Like huge fans his powerful wings churned the air, and Baree felthimself lifted suddenly from the earth. Still he held on--and in amoment both bird and beast fell back with a thud.

  Oohoomisew tried again. This time he was more successful, and he rosefully six feet into the air with Baree. They fell again. A third timethe old outlaw fought to wing himself free of Baree's grip; and then,exhausted, he lay with his giant wings outspread, hissing and crackinghis bill.

  Under those wings Baree's mind worked with the swift instincts of thekiller. Suddenly he changed his hold, burying his fangs into the underpart of Oohoomisew's body. They sank into three inches of feathers.Swift as Baree had been, Oohoomisew was equally swift to take advantageof his opportunity. In an instant he had swooped upward. There was ajerk, a rending of feathers from flesh--and Baree was alone on thefield of battle.

  Baree had not killed, but he had conquered. His first great day--ornight--had come. The world was filled with a new promise for him, asvast as the night itself. And after a moment he sat back on hishaunches, sniffing the air for his beaten enemy. Then, as if defyingthe feathered monster to come back and fight to the end, he pointed hissharp little muzzle up to the stars and sent forth his first babyishwolf howl into the night.