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There was a third shot the last. Wakayoo sank down in his tracks. His big head dropped between his forepaws. A racking cough or two came to Baree's ears. And then there was silence. It was slaughter but business. A minute later, standing over Wakayoo, Pierrot said to Nepeese: "Mon dieu, but it is a fine skin, Sakahet! It is worth twenty dollars over at Lac Bain!"
All that day Bush McTaggart followed a trail where Baree had left traces of his presence. Trap after trap he found robbed. On the lake he came upon the mangled wolf. From the first disturbing excitement of his discovery of Baree's presence his humor changed slowly to one of rage, and his rage increased as the day dragged out.
Her laugh, sweet and wild as a bird's trill, set Baree's heart throbbing with a desire to jump about with her among the flowers. For a time Nepeese seemed to forget Baree. Her wild blood raced with the joy of her triumph over the factor from Lac Bain. She saw him again, floundering about in the pool pictured him at the cabin now, soaked and angry, demanding of mon pere where she had gone.
Again and again David caught the swift, ghostly flutter of the snow owls; three times he heard the wolf-howl; once again Baree's dismal, homeless cry; and then they came suddenly out of the thick gloom of the forest into the twilight gray of a clearing. Twenty paces from them was a cabin. The dogs stopped. Father Roland fumbled at his big silver watch, and held it close up to his eyes.
Out of the darkness two yards away came a soft, puppyish whine, and the caressing sound of Kazan's tongue. Baree had felt the thrill of his first great adventure. He had discovered his father. This all happened in the third week of Baree's life. He was just eighteen days old when Gray Wolf allowed Kazan to make the acquaintance of his son.
This would undoubtedly have been Baree's choice if he had had a voice in the matter. Day after day he followed the canoe, swimming streams and working his way through swamp and forest. It was no easy matter. In the deep, slow waters of the Lower Peace the canoe made thirty-five miles a day; twice it made forty. But Hatchett kept Baree well fed, and each night the dog slept at David's feet in camp.
His jaws had passed quickly from the bone-licking to the bone-cracking age and before Oohoomisew could get away, if he was thinking of flight at all, Baree's fangs closed with a vicious 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 blinded by Oohoomisew's furious blows.
He scarcely breathed. But Nepeese saw the little quivers that shot through his body when her hand touched him, like electric shocks. "He beat you with a club," she was saying, her dark eyes within a foot of Baree's. "He beat you! That man-beast!" There came an interruption. The door opened, and the man-beast stood looking down on them, a grin on his red face.
And then, as Baree rolled in a limp heap on the floor, she saw his half-closed eyes and the dry blood on his jaws, and the light left her face as swiftly as the sun is shadowed by a cloud. "Baree," she cried softly. "Baree Baree!" She partly lifted him in her two hands. Baree's head sagged. His body was numbed until he was powerless to move. His legs were without feeling. He could scarcely see.
For a few moments he sniffed and looked around and pointed the wind with much seriousness, as though impressing on his fair acquaintance as many a two-legged animal has done before him his tremendous importance in the world at large. And Maheegun was properly impressed. Baree's bluff worked as beautifully as the bluffs of the two-legged animals.
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