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He heard the whining excitement in their throats; the snap of their jaws as they ran and in the golden moonlight ahead of him the sound of a caribou as it plunged through thickets and over windfalls in its race for life. It was as if Baree had belonged to the pack always. He had joined it naturally, as other stray wolves had joined it from out of the bush.
There were probably twenty beavers, not counting the young, and as if guided by a common signal something which Baree had not heard they became so quiet that hardly a sound could be heard in the pond. A few of them sank under the water and disappeared entirely, but most of them Baree could watch as they drew themselves out on shore.
Inch by inch she dragged it out until at last it lay at her feet and the opening was ready for her body. She looked again toward Pierrot. He was still busy, and she laughed softly as she untied a big red-and-white Bay handkerchief from about her shoulders. With this she would secure Baree.
And that beast was a devil. Listen " Swiftly, and yet leaving out none of the fine detail, he told of the weeks and months of strife between himself and Baree; of the maddening futility of all his tricks and schemes and the still more maddening cleverness of the beast he had at last succeeded in trapping. "He was a devil that clever," he cried fiercely when he had finished.
It fell again and again, and when McTaggart was done, Baree lay half stunned, his eyes partly closed by the blows, and his mouth bleeding. "That's the way we take the devil out of a wild dog," snarled McTaggart. "I guess you won't try the biting game again, eh, youngster? A thousand devils but you went almost to the bone of this hand!" He began washing the wound again.
And then he heard another voice; and this voice, too, was far less terrible than many sounds he had listened to in the forests. "We cannot find him, Nepeese," the voice was saying. "He has crawled off to die. It is too bad. Come." Where Baree had stood in the edge of the open Pierrot paused and pointed to a birch sapling that had been cut clean off by the Willow's bullet. Nepeese understood.
It was like trying to bite through a pillow, the feathers fangs, and just as they were beginning to prick the owlet's skin, Papayuchisew jabbing a little blindly with a beak that snapped sharply every time it closed got him by the ear. The pain of that hold was excruciating to Baree, and he made a more desperate effort to get his teeth through his enemy's thick armor of feathers.
The man was just about to disappear into the thick spruce. He paused, and looked back. "Coming, Boy?" Even at that distance Baree could see him grinning affably. He saw the outstretched hand, and the voice stirred new sensations in him. It was not like Pierrot's voice. He had never loved Pierrot. Neither was it soft and sweet like the Willow's.
Hauck came for him, the demon of murder in his face, and as they went down he heard scream after scream come from the Girl's lips, and in that scream the agonizing call of "Tara! Tara! Tara!" Over him he heard a sudden roar, the rush of a great body and with that thunder of Tara's rage and vengeance there mingled a hideous, wolfish snarl from Baree. He could see nothing.
Striking the main shore, Baree began going downstream. This was away from the windfall, and each step that he took carried him farther and farther from home. Every little while he stopped and listened. The forest was deeper. It was growing blacker and more mysterious. Its silence was frightening. At the end of half an hour Baree would even have welcomed Papayuchisew.
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