For a long time after Pierrot left them the Willow did not move fromthe spot where she had seated herself beside Baree. It was at last thedeepening shadows and a low rumble in the sky that roused her from thefear of the things Pierrot had told her. When she looked up, blackclouds were massing slowly over the open space above the spruce tops.Darkness was falling. In the whisper of the wind and the dead stillnessof the thickening gloom there was the sullen brewing of storm. Tonightthere would be no glorious sunset. There would be no twilight hour inwhich to follow the trail, no moon, no stars--and unless Pierrot andthe factor were already on their way, they would not start in the faceof the pitch blackness that would soon shroud the forest.
Nepeese shivered and rose to her feet. For the first time Baree got up,and he stood close at her side. Above them a flash of lightning cut theclouds like a knife of fire, followed in an instant by a terrific crashof thunder. Baree shrank back as if struck a blow. He would have slunkinto the shelter of the brush wall of the wigwam, but there wassomething about the Willow as he looked at her which gave himconfidence. The thunder crashed again. But he retreated no farther. Hiseyes were fixed on Nepeese.
She stood straight and slim in that gathering gloom riven by thelightning, her beautiful head thrown back, her lips parted, and hereyes glowing with an almost eager anticipation--a sculptured goddesswelcoming with bated breath the onrushing forces of the heavens.Perhaps it was because she was born during a night of storm. Many timesPierrot and the dead princess mother had told her that--how on thenight she had come into the world the crash of thunder and the flare oflightning had made the hours an inferno, how the streams had burst overtheir banks and the stems of ten thousand forest trees had snapped inits fury--and the beat of the deluge on their cabin roof had drownedthe sound of her mother's pain, and of her own first babyish cries.
On that night, it may be, the Spirit of Storm was born in Nepeese. Sheloved to face it, as she was facing it now. It made her forget allthings but the splendid might of nature. Her half-wild soul thrilled tothe crash and fire of it. Often she had reached up her bare arms andlaughed with joy as the deluge burst about her. Even now she might havestood there in the little open until the rain fell, if a whine fromBaree had not caused her to turn. As the first big drops struck withthe dull thud of leaden bullets about them, she went with him into thebalsam shelter.
Once before Baree had passed through a night of terrible storm--thenight he had hidden himself under a root and had seen the tree riven bylightning; but now he had company, and the warmth and soft pressure ofthe Willow's hand on his head and neck filled him with a strangecourage. He growled softly at the crashing thunder. He wanted to snapat the lightning flashes. Under her hand Nepeese felt the stiffening ofhis body, and in a moment of uncanny stillness she heard the sharp,uneasy click of his teeth. Then the rain fell.
It was not like other rains Baree had known. It was an inundationsweeping down out of the blackness of the skies. Within five minutesthe interior of the balsam shelter was a shower bath. After half anhour of that torrential downpour, Nepeese was soaked to the skin. Thewater ran in little rivulets down her body. It trickled in tiny streamsfrom her drenched braids and dropped from her long lashes, and theblanket under her became wet as a mop. To Baree it was almost as bad ashis near-drowning in the stream after his fight with Papayuchisew, andhe snuggled closer and closer under the sheltering arm of the Willow.It seemed an interminable time before the thunder rolled far to theeast, and the lightning died away into distant and intermittentflashings. Even after that the rain fell for another hour. Then itstopped as suddenly as it had begun.
With a laughing gasp Nepeese rose to her feet. The water gurgled in hermoccasins as she walked out into the open. She paid no attention toBaree--and he followed her. Across the open in the treetops the last ofthe storm clouds were drifting away. A star shone--then another; andthe Willow stood watching them as they appeared until there were somany she could not count. It was no longer black. A wonderful starlightflooded the open after the inky gloom of the storm.
Nepeese looked down and saw Baree. He was standing quietly andunleashed, with freedom on all sides of him. Yet he did not run. He waswaiting, wet as a water rat, with his eyes fixed on her expectantly.Nepeese made a movement toward him, and hesitated.
"No, you will not run away, Baree. I will leave you free. And now wemust have a fire!"
A fire! Anyone but Pierrot might have said that she was crazy. Not astem or twig in the forest that was not dripping! They could hear thetrickle of running water all about them.
"A fire," she said again. "Let us hunt for the wuskisi, Baree."
With her wet clothes clinging to her lightly, she was like a slimshadow as she crossed the soggy clearing and lost herself among theforest trees. Baree still followed. She went straight to a birch treethat she had located that day and began tearing off the loose bark. Anarmful of this bark she carried close to the wigwam, and on it sheheaped load after load of wet wood until she had a great pile. From abottle in the wigwam she secured a dry match, and at the first touch ofits tiny flame the birch bark flared up like paper soaked in oil. Halfan hour later the Willow's fire--if there had been no forest walls tohide it--could have been seen at the cabin a mile away. Not until itwas blazing a dozen feet into the air did she cease piling wood on it.Then she drove sticks into the soft ground and over these sticks shestretched the blanket out to dry.
So their first night passed--storm, the cool, deep pool, the big fire;and later, when the Willow's clothes and the blanket had dried, a fewhours' sleep. At dawn they returned to the cabin. It was a cautiousapproach. There was no smoke coming from the chimney. The door wasclosed. Pierrot and Bush McTaggart were gone.