The Collected Works of James Oliver Curwood (Illustrated Edition). James Oliver Curwood
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and tufts of earth down at him; and McTaggart, looking up as he gained his equilibrium, saw her leaning so far over that she seemed almost about to fall. Her long braids hung down into the chasm, gleaming in the sun. Her eyes were laughing while her lips taunted him. He could see the flash of her white teeth.
"Beast! Beast!"
He began swimming, still looking up at her. It was a hundred yards down the slow-going current to the beach of shale where he could climb out, and a half of that distance she followed him, laughing and taunting him, and flinging down sticks and pebbles. He noted that none of the sticks or stones was large enough to hurt him. When at last his feet touched bottom, she was gone.
Swiftly Nepeese ran back over the trail, and almost into Pierrot's arms. She was panting and laughing when for a moment she stopped.
"I have given him the answer, Nootawe! He is in the pool!"
Into the balsams she disappeared like a bird. Pierrot made no effort to stop her or to follow.
"Tonnerre de Dieu," he chuckled—and cut straight across for the other trail.
Nepeese was out of breath when she reached the cabin. Baree, fastened to a table leg by a babiche thong, heard her pause for a moment at the door. Then she entered and came straight to him. During the half-hour of her absence Baree had scarcely moved. That half-hour, and the few minutes that had preceded it, had made tremendous impressions upon him. Nature, heredity, and instinct were at work, clashing and readjusting, impinging on him a new intelligence—the beginning of a new understanding. A swift and savage impulse had made him leap at Bush McTaggart when the factor put his hand on the Willow's head. It was not reason. It was a hearkening back of the dog to that day long ago when Kazan, his father, had lulled the man-brute in the tent, the man-brute who had dared to molest Thorpe's wife, whom Kazan worshiped. Then it had been the dog—and the woman.
And here again it was the woman. She had appealed to the great hidden passion that was in Baree and that had come to him from Kazan. Of all the living things in the world, he knew that he must not hurt this creature that appeared to him through the door. He trembled as she knelt before him again, and up through the years came the wild and glorious surge of Kazan's blood, overwhelming the wolf, submerging the savagery of his birth—and with his head flat on the floor he whined softly, and WAGGED HIS TAIL.
Nepeese gave a cry of joy.
"Baree!" she whispered, taking his head in her hands. "Baree!"
Her touch thrilled him. It sent little throbs through his body, a tremulous quivering which she could feel and which deepened the glow in her eyes. Gently her hand stroked his head and his back. It seemed to Nepeese that he did not breathe. Under the caress of her hand his eyes closed. In another moment she was talking to him, and at the sound of her voice his eyes shot open.
"He will come here—that beast—and he will kill us," she was saying. "He will kill you because you bit him, Baree. Ugh, I wish you were bigger, and stronger, so that you could take off his head for me!"
She was untying the babiche from about the table leg, and under her breath she laughed. She was not frightened. It was a tremendous adventure—and she throbbed with exultation at the thought of having beaten the man-beast in her own way. She could see him in the pool struggling and beating about like a great fish. He was just about crawling out of the chasm now—and she laughed again as she caught Baree up under her arm.
"Oh—oopi-nao—but you are heavy!" she gasped, "And yet I must carry you—because I am going to run!"
She hurried outside. Pierrot had not come, and she darted swiftly into the balsams back of the cabin, with Baree hung in the crook of her arm, like a sack filled at both ends and tied in the middle. He felt like that, too. But he still had no inclination to wriggle himself free. Nepeese ran with him until her arm ached. Then she stopped and put him down on his feet, holding to the end of the caribou-skin thong that was tied about his neck. She was prepared for any lunge he might make to escape. She expected that he would make an attempt, and for a few moments she watched him closely, while Baree, with his feet on earth once more, looked about him. And then the Willow spoke to him softly.
"You are not going to run away, Baree. Non, you are going to stay with me, and we will kill that man-beast if he dares do to me again what he did back there." She flung back the loose hair from about her flushed face, and for a moment she forgot Baree as she thought of that half-minute at the edge of the chasm. He was looking straight up at her when her glance fell on him again. "Non, you are not going to run away—you are going to follow me," she whispered. "Come."
The babiche string tightened about Baree's neck as she urged him to follow. It was like another rabbit snare, and he braced his forefeet and bared his fangs just a little. The Willow did not pull. Fearlessly she put her hand on his head again. From the direction of the cabin came a shout, and at the sound of it she took Baree up under her arm once more.
"Bete noir—bete noir!" she called back tauntingly, but only loud enough to be heard a few yards away. "Go back to Lac Bain—owases—you wild beast!"
Nepeese began to make her way swiftly through the forest. It grew deeper and darker, and there were no trails. Three times in the next half-hour she stopped to put Baree down and rest her arm. Each time she pleaded with him coaxingly to follow her. The second and third times Baree wriggled and wagged his tail, but beyond those demonstrations of his satisfaction with the turn his affairs had taken he would not go. When the string tightened around his neck, he braced himself; once he growled—again he snapped viciously at the babiche. So Nepeese continued to carry him.
They came at last into a clearing. It was a tiny meadow in the heart of the forest, not more than three or four times as big as the cabin. Underfoot the grass was soft and green, and thickly strewn with flowers. Straight through the heart of this little oasis trickled a streamlet across which the Willow jumped with Baree under her arm, and on the edge of the rill was a small wigwam made of freshly cut spruce and balsam boughs. Into her diminutive mekewap the Willow thrust her head to see that things were as she had left them yesterday. Then, with a long breath of relief, she put down her four-legged burden and fastened the end of the babiche to one of the cut spruce limbs.
Baree burrowed himself back into the wall of the wigwam, and with head alert—and eyes wide open—watched his companion attentively. Not a movement of the Willow escaped him. She was radiant—and happy. 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. And mon pere, with a shrug of his shoulders, was telling him that he didn't know—that probably she had run off into the forest. It did not enter into her head that in tricking Bush McTaggart in that way she was playing with dynamite. She did not foresee the peril that in an instant would have stamped the wild flush from her face and curdled the blood in her veins—she did not guess that McTaggart had become for her a deadlier menace than ever.
Nepeese knew that he must be angry. But what had she to fear? Mon pere would be angry, too, if she told him what had happened at the edge of the chasm. But she would not tell him. He might kill the man from Lac Bain. A factor was great. But Pierrot, her father, was greater. It was an unlimited faith in her, born of her mother. Perhaps even now Pierrot was sending him back to Lac Bain, telling him that his business was there. But she would not return to the cabin to see. She would wait here. Mon pere would understand—and he knew where to find her when the man was gone. But it would have been such fun to throw sticks at him as he went!
After a little Nepeese returned to Baree. She brought him water and gave him a piece of raw fish. For hours they were alone, and with each hour there grew stronger in Baree the desire to follow the girl in every movement she made, to crawl close to her when she sat down, to feel the touch of her dress, of her hand—and to hear her voice. But he did not show this desire. He was still a little savage of the forests—a four-footed barbarian born half of a wolf and half of a dog; and he lay still. With Umisk he would have played.