Baree Son of Kazan Read online

  CHAPTER 6

  Baree's fight with Oohoomisew was good medicine for him. It not onlygave him great confidence in himself, but it also cleared the fever ofugliness from his blood. He no longer snapped and snarled at things ashe went on through the night.

  It was a wonderful night. The moon was straight overhead, and the skywas filled with stars, so that in the open spaces the light was almostlike that of day, except that it was softer and more beautiful. It wasvery still. There was no wind in the treetops, and it seemed to Bareethat the howl he had given must have echoed to the end of the world.

  Now and then Baree heard a sound--and always he stopped, attentive andlistening. Far away he heard the long, soft mooing of a cow moose. Heheard a great splashing in the water of a small lake that he came to,and once there came to him the sharp cracking of horn against horn--twobucks settling a little difference of opinion a quarter of a mile away.But it was always the wolf howl that made him sit and listen longest,his heart beating with a strange impulse which he did not as yetunderstand. It was the call of his breed, growing in him slowly butinsistently.

  He was still a wanderer--pupamootao, the Indians call it. It is this"wander spirit" that inspires for a time nearly every creature of thewild as soon as it is able to care for itself--nature's scheme,perhaps, for doing away with too close family relations and possiblydangerous interbreeding. Baree, like the young wolf seeking new huntinggrounds, or the young fox discovering a new world, had no reason ormethod in his wandering. He was simply "traveling"--going on. He wantedsomething which he could not find. The wolf call brought it to him.

  The stars and the moon filled Baree with a yearning for this something.The distant sounds impinged upon him his great aloneness. And instincttold him that only by questing could he find. It was not so much Kazanand Gray Wolf that he missed now--not so much motherhood and home as itwas companionship. Now that he had fought the wolfish rage out of himin his battle with Oohoomisew, the dog part of him had come into itsown again--the lovable half of him, the part that wanted to snuggle upnear something that was alive and friendly, small odds whether it worefeathers or fur, was clawed or hoofed.

  He was sore from the Willow's bullet, and he was sore from battle, andtoward dawn he lay down under a shelter of some alders at the edge of asecond small lake and rested until midday. Then he began questing inthe reeds and close to the pond lilies for food. He found a deadjackfish, partly eaten by a mink, and finished it.

  His wound was much less painful this afternoon, and by nightfall hescarcely noticed it at all. Since his almost tragic end at the hands ofNepeese, he had been traveling in a general northeasterly direction,following instinctively the run of the waterways. But his progress hadbeen slow, and when darkness came again he was not more than eight orten miles from the hole into which he had fallen after the Willow hadshot him.

  Baree did not travel far this night. The fact that his wound had comewith dusk, and his fight with Oohoomisew still later, filled him withcaution. Experience had taught him that the dark shadows and the blackpits in the forest were possible ambuscades of danger. He was no longerafraid, as he had once been, but he had had fighting enough for a time,and so he accepted circumspection as the better part of valor and heldhimself aloof from the perils of darkness. It was a strange instinctthat made him seek his bed on the top of a huge rock up which he hadsome difficulty in climbing. Perhaps it was a harkening back to thedays of long ago when Gray Wolf, in her first motherhood, sought refugeat the summit of the Sun Rock which towered high above the forest worldof which she and Kazan were a part, and where later she was blinded inher battle with the lynx.

  Baree's rock, instead of rising for a hundred feet or more straight up,was possibly as high as a man's head. It was in the edge of the creekbottom, with the spruce forest close at his back. For many hours he didnot sleep, but lay keenly alert, his ears tuned to catch every soundthat came out of the dark world about him. There was more thancuriosity in his alertness tonight. His education had broadenedimmensely in one way: he had learned that he was a very small part ofall this wonderful earth that lay under the stars and the moon, and hewas keenly alive with the desire to become better acquainted with itwithout any more fighting or hurt. Tonight he knew what it meant whenhe saw now and then gray shadows float silently out of the forest intothe moonlight--the owls, monsters of the breed with which he hadfought. He heard the crackling of hoofed feet and the smashing of heavybodies in the underbrush. He heard again the mooing of the moose.Voices came to him that he had not heard before--the sharp yap-yap-yapof a fox, the unearthly, laughing cry of a great Northern loon on alake half a mile away, the scream of a lynx that came floating throughmiles of forest, the low, soft croaks of the nighthawks between himselfand the stars. He heard strange whisperings in thetreetops--whisperings of the wind. And once, in the heart of a deadstillness, a buck whistled shrilly close behind his rock--and at thewolf scent in the air shot away in a terror-stricken gray streak.

  All these sounds held their new meaning for Baree. Swiftly he wascoming into his knowledge of the wilderness. His eyes gleamed; hisblood thrilled. Often for many minutes at a time he scarcely moved. Butof all the sounds that came to him, the wolf cry thrilled him most.Again and again he listened to it. At times it was far away, so farthat it was like a whisper, dying away almost before it reached him.Then again it would come to him full-throated, hot with the breath ofthe chase, calling him to the red thrill of the hunt, to the wild orgyof torn flesh and running blood--calling, calling, calling. That wasit, calling him to his own kin, to the bone of his bone and the fleshof his flesh--to the wild, fierce hunting packs of his mother's tribe!It was Gray Wolf's voice seeking for him in the night--Gray Wolf'sblood inviting him to the Brotherhood of the Pack.

  Baree trembled as he listened. In his throat he whined softly. He edgedto the sheer face of the rock. He wanted to go; nature was urging himto go. But the call of the wild was struggling against odds. For in himwas the dog, with its generations of subdued and sleepinginstincts--and all that night the dog in him kept Baree to the top ofhis rock.

  Next morning Baree found many crayfish along the creek, and he feastedon their succulent flesh until he felt that he would never be hungryagain. Nothing had tasted quite so good since he had eaten thepartridge of which he had robbed Sekoosew the ermine.

  In the middle of the afternoon Baree came into a part of the forestthat was very quiet and very peaceful. The creek had deepened. Inplaces its banks swept out until they formed small ponds. Twice he madeconsiderable detours to get around these ponds. He traveled veryquietly, listening and watching. Not since the ill-fated day he hadleft the old windfall had he felt quite so much at home as now. Itseemed to him that at last he was treading country which he knew, andwhere he would find friends. Perhaps this was another miracle mysteryof instinct--of nature. For he was in old Beaver Tooth's domain. It washere that his father and mother had hunted in the days before he wasborn. It was not far from here that Kazan and Beaver Tooth had foughtthat mighty duel under water, from which Kazan had escaped with hislife without another breath to lose.

  Baree would never know these things. He would never know that he wastraveling over old trails. But something deep in him gripped himstrangely. He sniffed the air, as if in it he found the scent offamiliar things. It was only a faint breath--an indefinable promisethat brought him to the point of a mysterious anticipation.

  The forest grew deeper. It was wonderful virgin forest. There was noundergrowth, and traveling under the trees was like being in a vast,mystery-filled cavern through the roof of which the light of day brokesoftly, brightened here and there by golden splashes of the sun. For amile Baree made his way quietly through this forest. He saw nothing buta few winged flirtings of birds; there was almost no sound. Then hecame to a still larger pond. Around this pond there was a thick growthof alders and willows where the larger trees had thinned out. He sawthe glimmer of afternoon sunlight on the water--and then, all at once,he heard life.

  There had
been few changes in Beaver Tooth's colony since the days ofhis feud with Kazan and the otters. Old Beaver Tooth was somewhatolder. He was fatter. He slept a great deal, and perhaps he was lesscautious. He was dozing on the great mud-and-brushwood dam of which hehad been engineer-in-chief, when Baree came out softly on a high bankthirty or forty feet away. So noiseless had Baree been that none of thebeavers had seen or heard him. He squatted himself flat on his belly,hidden behind a tuft of grass, and with eager interest watched everymovement. Beaver Tooth was rousing himself. He stood on his short legsfor a moment; then he tilted himself up on his broad, flat tail like asoldier at attention, and with a sudden whistle dived into the pondwith a great splash.

  In another moment it seemed to Baree that the pond was alive withbeavers. Heads and bodies appeared and disappeared, rushing this wayand that through the water in a manner that amazed and puzzled him. Itwas the colony's evening frolic. Tails hit the water like flat boards.Odd whistlings rose above the splashing--and then as suddenly as it hadbegun, the play came to an end. There were probably twenty beavers, notcounting the young, and as if guided by a common signal--somethingwhich Baree had not heard--they became so quiet that hardly a soundcould be heard in the pond. A few of them sank under the water anddisappeared entirely, but most of them Baree could watch as they drewthemselves out on shore.

  The beavers lost no time in getting at their labor, and Baree watchedand listened without so much as rustling a blade of the grass in whichhe was concealed. He was trying to understand. He was striving to placethese curious and comfortable-looking creatures in his knowledge ofthings. They did not alarm him; he felt no uneasiness at their numberor size. His stillness was not the quiet of discretion, but rather of astrange and growing desire to get better acquainted with this curiousfour-legged brotherhood of the pond. Already they had begun to make thebig forest less lonely for him. And then, close under him--not morethan ten feet from where he lay--he saw something that almost gavevoice to the puppyish longing for companionship that was in him.

  Down there, on a clean strip of the shore that rose out of the soft mudof the pond, waddled fat little Umisk and three of his playmates. Umiskwas just about Baree's age, perhaps a week or two younger. But he wasfully as heavy, and almost as wide as he was long. Nature can produceno four-footed creature that is more lovable than a baby beaver, unlessit is a baby bear; and Umisk would have taken first prize at any beaverbaby show in the world. His three companions were a bit smaller. Theycame waddling from behind a low willow, making queer little chucklingnoises, their little flat tails dragging like tiny sledges behind them.They were fat and furry, and mighty friendly looking to Baree, and hisheart beat a sudden swift-pit-a-pat of joy.

  But Baree did not move. He scarcely breathed. And then, suddenly, Umiskturned on one of his playmates and bowled him over. Instantly the othertwo were on Umisk, and the four little beavers rolled over and over,kicking with their short feet and spatting with their tails, and allthe time emitting soft little squeaking cries. Baree knew that it wasnot fight but frolic. He rose up on his feet. He forgot where hewas--forgot everything in the world but those playing, furry balls. Forthe moment all the hard training nature had been giving him was lost.He was no longer a fighter, no longer a hunter, no longer a seekerafter food. He was a puppy, and in him there rose a desire that wasgreater than hunger. He wanted to go down there with Umisk and hislittle chums and roll and play. He wanted to tell them, if such a thingwere possible, that he had lost his mother and his home, and that hehad been having a mighty hard time of it, and that he would like tostay with them and their mothers and fathers if they didn't mind.

  In his throat there came the least bit of a whine. It was so low thatUmisk and his playmates did not hear it. They were tremendously busy.

  Softly Baree took his first step toward them, and then another--and atlast he stood on the narrow strip of shore within half a dozen feet ofthem. His sharp little ears were pitched forward, and he was wigglinghis tail as fast as he could, and every muscle in his body wastrembling in anticipation.

  It was then that Umisk saw him, and his fat little body became suddenlyas motionless as a stone.

  "Hello!" said Baree, wiggling his whole body and talking as plainly asa human tongue could talk. "Do you care if I play with you?"

  Umisk made no response. His three playmates now had their eyes onBaree. They didn't make a move. They looked stunned. Four pairs ofstaring, wondering eyes were fixed on the stranger.

  Baree made another effort. He groveled on his forelegs, while his tailand hind legs continued to wiggle, and with a sniff he grabbed a bit ofstick between his teeth.

  "Come on--let me in," he urged. "I know how to play!"

  He tossed the stick in the air as if to prove what he was saying, andgave a little yap.

  Umisk and his brothers were like dummies.

  And then, of a sudden, someone saw Baree. It was a big beaver swimmingdown the pond with a sapling timber for the new dam that was under way.Instantly he loosed his hold and faced the shore. And then, like thereport of a rifle, there came the crack of his big flat tail on thewater--the beaver's signal of danger that on a quiet night can be heardhalf a mile away.

  "DANGER," it warned. "DANGER--DANGER--DANGER!"

  Scarcely had the signal gone forth when tails were cracking in alldirections--in the pond, in the hidden canals, in the thick willows andalders. To Umisk and his companions they said:

  "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

  Baree stood rigid and motionless now. In amazement he watched the fourlittle beavers plunge into the pond and disappear. He heard the soundsof other and heavier bodies striking the water. And then there followeda strange and disquieting silence. Softly Baree whined, and his whinewas almost a sobbing cry. Why had Umisk and his little mates run awayfrom him? What had he done that they didn't want to make friends withhim? A great loneliness swept over him--a loneliness greater even thanthat of his first night away from his mother. The last of the sun fadedout of the sky as he stood there. Darker shadows crept over the pond.He looked into the forest, where night was gathering--and with anotherwhining cry he slunk back into it. He had not found friendship. He hadnot found comradeship. And his heart was very sad.