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Updated: May 29, 2025
"But where did Baree go, mon pere?" Nepeese cried. Impelled by the wild alarm of the Willow's terrible cries and the sight of Pierrot dashing madly toward him from the dead body of Wakayoo, Baree did not stop running until it seemed as though his lungs could not draw another breath. When he stopped, he was well out of the canyon and headed for the beaver pond.
Wakayoo stood knee-deep in a pool that had formed behind a sand bar, and he was having tremendously good luck. Even as Baree shrank back, his eyes popping at sight of this monster he had seen but once before, in the gloom of night, one of Wakayoo's big paws sent a great splash of water high in the air, and a fish landed on the pebbly shore.
A day and night he spent in the little meadow before he went back out of the canyon and into his old haunts along the creek, where Wakayoo had fished for him. There was another bear here now, and he also was fishing. Perhaps he was a son or a grandson of Wakayoo. Baree smelled where he had made his fish caches, and for three days he lived on fish before he struck out for the North.
Then he lumbered slowly away in the direction of the rumbling waterfall. Twenty seconds after the last of Wakayoo had disappeared in a turn of the creek, Baree was under the broken balsam. He dragged out a fish that was still alive. He ate the whole of it, and it tasted delicious.
And Baree carried the wolf scent. It grew stronger in Wakayoo's nose; and just then, as if to increase whatever nervousness was growing in him, there came from out of the forest behind him a long and wailing howl. With an audible grunt, Wakayoo moved on. Wolves were pests, he argued. They wouldn't stand up and fight.
It was the fact that another animal was standing shoulder to shoulder with Wakayoo, and that it was not a brother bear, but a huge wolf. Slowly one of his thin hands rose to his eyes and he wiped away what he thought must surely be a strange something that was fooling his vision. In all his eighty years and odd he had never known a wolf to be thus friendly with a bear.
Once, when he awoke, he thought the spruce root was Gray Wolf; and when he found that she was not there, Pierrot and the Willow could have told what his crying meant if they had heard it. Again and again he had visions of the thrilling happenings of that day. He saw the flight of Wakayoo over the little meadow he saw him die again.
He called to Nepeese as he saw Baree entering it, and together they climbed the slope. Baree had almost reached the edge of the little prison meadow when suddenly he stopped himself so quickly that he fell back on his haunches and his heart jumped up into his throat. Full in his path stood Wakayoo, the huge black bear! For perhaps a half-minute Baree hesitated between the two perils.
It was much pleasanter than the dark and silent beaver stream. It seemed possessed of life, and the rush and tumult of it the song and thunder of the water gave to Baree entirely new sensations. He made his way along it slowly and cautiously, and it was because of this slowness and caution that he came suddenly and unobserved upon Wakayoo, the big black bear, hard at work fishing.
That seemed but yesterday. He entered the little meadow, and stood beside the great rock that had almost crushed the life out of the Willow's body; and then he remembered where Wakayoo, his big bear friend, had died under Pierrot's rifle and he smelled of Wakayoo's whitened bones where they lay scattered in the green grass, with flowers growing up among them.
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