CHAPTER 29
Baree was on his feet, rigid as hewn rock, when Carvel came out of thetent, and for a few moments Carvel stood in silence, watching himclosely. Would the dog respond to the call of the pack? Did he belongto them? Would he go--now? The wolves were drawing nearer. They werenot circling, as a caribou or a deer would have circled, but weretraveling straight--dead straight for their camp. The significance ofthis fact was easily understood by Carvel. All that afternoon Baree'sfeet had left a blood smell in their trail, and the wolves had struckthe trail in the deep forest, where the falling snow had not coveredit. Carvel was not alarmed. More than once in his five years ofwandering between the Arctic and the Height of Land he had played thegame with the wolves. Once he had almost lost, but that was out in theopen Barren. Tonight he had a fire, and in the event of his firewoodrunning out he had trees he could climb. His anxiety just now wascentered in Baree. So he said, making his voice quite casual:
"You aren't going, are you, old chap?"
If Baree heard him he gave no evidence of it. But Carvel, stillwatching him closely, saw that the hair along his spine had risen likea brush, and then he heard--growing slowly in Baree's throat--a snarlof ferocious hatred. It was the sort of snarl that had held back thefactor from Lac Bain, and Carvel, opening the breech of his gun to seethat all was right, chuckled happily. Baree may have heard the chuckle.Perhaps it meant something to him, for he turned his head suddenly andwith flattened ears looked at his companion.
The wolves were silent now. Carvel knew what that meant, and he wastensely alert. In the stillness the click of the safety on his riflesounded with metallic sharpness. For many minutes they heard nothingbut the crack of the fire. Suddenly Baree's muscles seemed to snap. Hesprang back, and faced the quarter behind Carvel, his head level withhis shoulders, his inch-long fangs gleaming as he snarled into theblack caverns of the forest beyond the rim of firelight. Carvel hadturned like a shot. It was almost frightening--what he saw. A pair ofeyes burning with greenish fire, and then another pair, and after thatso many of them that he could not have counted them. He gave a saddengasp. They were like cat eyes, only much larger. Some of them, catchingthe firelight fully, were red as coals, others flashed blue andgreen--living things without bodies. With a swift glance he took in theblack circle of the forest. They were out there, too; they were on allsides of them, but where he had seen them first they were thickest. Inthese first few seconds he had forgotten Baree, awed almost tostupefaction by that monster-eyed cordon of death that hemmed them in.There were fifty--perhaps a hundred wolves out there, afraid of nothingin all this savage world but fire. They had come up without the soundof a padded foot or a broken twig. If it had been later, and they hadbeen asleep, and the fire out--
He shuddered, and for a moment the thought got the better of hisnerves. He had not intended to shoot except from necessity, but all atonce his rifle came to his shoulder and he sent a stream of fire outwhere the eyes were thickest. Baree knew what the shots meant, andfilled with the mad desire to get at the throat of one of his enemieshe dashed in their direction. Carvel gave a startled yell as he went.He saw the flash of Baree's body, saw it swallowed up in the gloom, andin that same instant heard the deadly clash of fangs and the impact ofbodies. A wild thrill shot through him. The dog had charged alone--andthe wolves had waited. There could be but one end. His four-footedcomrade had gone straight into the jaws of death!
He could hear the ravening snap of those jaws out in the darkness. Itwas sickening. His hand went to the Colt .45 at his belt, and he thrusthis empty rifle butt downward into the snow. With the big automaticbefore his eyes he plunged out into the darkness, and from his lipsthere issued a wild yelling that could have been heard a mile away.With the yelling a steady stream of fire spat from the Colt into themass of fighting beasts. There were eight shots in the automatic, andnot until the plunger clicked with metallic emptiness did Carvel ceasehis yelling and retreat into the firelight. He listened, breathingdeeply. He no longer saw eyes in the darkness, nor did he hear themovement of bodies. The suddenness and ferocity of his attack haddriven back the wolf horde. But the dog! He caught his breath, andstrained his eyes. A shadow was dragging itself into the circle oflight. It was Baree. Carvel ran to him, put his arms under hisshoulders, and brought him to the fire.
For a long time after that there was a questioning light in Carvel'seyes. He reloaded his guns, put fresh fuel on the fire, and from hispack dug out strips of cloth with which he bandaged three or four ofthe deepest cuts in Baree's legs. And a dozen times he asked, in awondering sort of way,
"Now what the deuce made you do that, old chap? What have YOU gotagainst the wolves?"
All that night he did not sleep, but watched.
Their experience with the wolves broke down the last bit of uncertaintythat might have existed between the man and the dog. For days afterthat, as they traveled slowly north and west, Carvel nursed Baree as hemight have cared for a sick child. Because of the dog's hurts, he madeonly a few miles a day. Baree understood, and in him there grewstronger and stronger a great love for the man whose hands were asgentle as the Willow's and whose voice warmed him with the thrill of animmeasurable comradeship. He no longer feared him or had a suspicion ofhim. And Carvel, on his part, was observing things. The vast emptinessof the world about them, and their aloneness, gave him the opportunityof pondering over unimportant details, and he found himself each daywatching Baree a little more closely. He made at last a discovery whichinterested him deeply. Always, when they halted on the trail, Bareewould turn his face to the south. When they were in camp it was fromthe south that he nosed the wind most frequently. This was quitenatural, Carvel thought, for his old hunting grounds were back there.But as the days passed he began to notice other things. Now and then,looking off into the far country from which they had come, Baree wouldwhine softly, and on that day he would be filled with a greatrestlessness. He gave no evidence of wanting to leave Carvel, but moreand more Carvel came to understand that some mysterious call was comingto him from out of the south.
It was the wanderer's intention to swing over into the country of theGreat Slave, a good eight hundred miles to the north and west, beforethe mush snows came. From there, when the waters opened in springtime,he planned to travel by canoe westward to the Mackenzie and ultimatelyto the mountains of British Columbia. These plans were changed inFebruary. They were caught in a great storm in the Wholdaia Lakecountry, and when their fortunes looked darkest Carvel stumbled on acabin in the heart of a deep spruce forest, and in this cabin there wasa dead man. He had been dead for many days, and was frozen stiff.Carvel chopped a hole in the earth and buried him.
The cabin was a treasure trove to Carvel and Baree, and especially tothe man. It evidently possessed no other owner than the one who haddied. It was comfortable and stocked with provisions; and more thanthat, its owner had made a splendid catch of fur before the frost bithis lungs, and he died. Carvel went over them carefully and joyously.They were worth a thousand dollars at any post, and he could see noreason why they did not belong to him now. Within a week he had blazedout the dead man's snow-covered trap line and was trapping on his ownaccount.
This was two hundred miles north and west of the Gray Loon, and soonCarvel observed that Baree did not face directly south in those momentswhen the strange call came to him, but south and east. And now, witheach day that passed, the sun rose higher in the sky; it grew warmer;the snow softened underfoot, and in the air was the tremulous andgrowing throb of spring. With these things came the old yearning toBaree; the heart-thrilling call of the lonely graves back on the GrayLoon, of the burned cabin, the abandoned tepee beyond the pool--and ofNepeese. In his sleep he saw visions of things. He heard again the low,sweet voice of the Willow, felt the touch of her hand, was at play withher once more in the dark shades of the forest--and Carvel would sitand watch him as he dreamed, trying to read the meaning of what he sawand heard.
In April Carvel shouldered his furs up to the Hudson's Bay Company'
spost at Lac la Biche, which was still farther north. Baree accompaniedhim halfway, and then--at sundown Carvel returned to the cabin andfound him there. He was so overjoyed that he caught the dog's head inhis arms and hugged it. They lived in the cabin until May. The budswere swelling then, and the smell of growing things had begun to riseup out of the earth.
Then Carvel found the first of the early blue flowers.
That night he packed up.
"It's time to travel," he announced to Baree. "And I've sort of changedmy mind. We're going back--there." And he pointed south.