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Updated: April 30, 2025
After the pain and hunger and treachery of his adventure, it was a wonderful homecoming for Baree. He slept that night at the foot of the Willow's bed. The next morning it was the cool caress of his tongue on her hand that awakened her. With this day they resumed the comradeship interrupted by Baree's temporary desertion. The attachment was greater than ever on Baree's part.
They were not circling, as a caribou or a deer would have circled, but were traveling straight dead straight for their camp. The significance of this fact was easily understood by Carvel. All that afternoon Baree's feet had left a blood smell in their trail, and the wolves had struck the trail in the deep forest, where the falling snow had not covered it. Carvel was not alarmed.
At this sound, which Baree's sharp ears caught, he swung up to her with a light and mincing step, and in another moment they were smelling noses. When the sun rose, half an hour later, it found them still in the small clearing on the side of the ridge, with a deep fringe of forest under them, and beyond that a wide, timbered plain which looked like a ghostly shroud in its mantle of frost.
When he arrived at the second cabin, late in the afternoon, Baree's tracks were not an hour old in the snow. Three times during the night he heard the dog howling. The third day McTaggart did not return to Lac Bain, but began a cautious hunt for Baree.
He had not ceased to hate Baree; he still hated him as he had never hated a man, but he had an even greater reason now for wanting to kill him. After a time he ceased to talk at the Post about the Black Wolf that was robbing his line. The furs damaged by Baree's teeth he kept out of sight, and to himself he kept his secret.
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.
Jim Carvel held out his hand, and the snarl that was in Baree's throat died away. The man rose to his feet. He stood there, looking in the direction taken by Bush McTaggart, and chuckled in a curious, exultant sort of way. There was friendliness even in that chuckle. There was friendliness in his eyes and in the shine of his teeth as he looked again at Baree.
There was also a red streak down the side of McTaggart's bullish neck. "You little devil!" he snarled at Baree. "You little devil!" He reached over suddenly and gave Baree's head a vicious blow with his heavy hand. "I ought to beat your brains out, and I believe I will!" Baree watched him as he picked up a stick close at his side a bit of firewood.
For when Baree came upon Umisk eating his supper of alder bark that evening, Umisk stood his ground to the last inch, and for the first time they smelled noses. At least Baree sniffed audibly, and plucky little Umisk sat like a rolled-up sphinx. That was the final cementing of their friendship on Baree's part.
"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!"
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