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Page 46
It was then that Baree found himself at the side of Maheegun. She was
panting; her red tongue hung from her open jaws. But at his presence
she brought her fangs together with a snap and slunk from him into the
heart of the wind-run and disappointed pack. The wolves were in an ugly
temper, but Baree did not sense the fact. Nepeese had trained him to
take to water like an otter, and he did not understand why this narrow
river should stop them as it had. He ran down to the water and stood
belly deep in it, facing for an instant the horde of savage beasts
above him, wondering why they did not follow. And he was black--BLACK.
He came among them again, and for the first time they noticed him.
The restless movements of the waters ceased now. A new and wondering
interest held them rigid. Fangs closed sharply. A little in the open
Baree saw Maheegun, with a big gray wolf standing near her. He went to
her again, and this time she remained with flattened ears until he was
sniffing her neck. And then, with a vicious snarl, she snapped at him.
Her teeth sank deep in the soft flesh of his shoulder, and at the
unexpectedness and pain of her attack, he let out a yelp. The next
instant the big gray wolf was at him.
Again caught unexpectedly, Baree went down with the wolf's fangs at his
throat. But in him was the blood of Kazan, the flesh and bone and sinew
of Kazan, and for the first time in his life he fought as Kazan fought
on that terrible day at the top of the Sun Rock. He was young; he had
yet to learn the cleverness and the strategy of the veteran. But his
jaws were like the iron clamps with which Pierrot set his bear traps,
and in his heart was sudden and blinding rage, a desire to kill that
rose above all sense of pain or fear.
That fight, if it had been fair, would have been a victory for Baree,
even in his youth and inexperience. In fairness the pack should have
waited. It was a law of the pack to wait--until one was done for. But
Baree was black. He was a stranger, an interloper, a creature whom they
noticed now in a moment when their blood was hot with the rage and
disappointment of killers who had missed their prey. A second wolf
sprang in, striking Baree treacherously from the flank. And while he
was in the snow, his jaws crushing the foreleg of his first foe, the
pack was on him en masse.
Such an attack on the young caribou bull would have meant death in less
than a minute. Every fang would have found its hold. Baree, by the
fortunate circumstance that he was under his first two assailants and
protected by their bodies, was saved from being torn instantly into
pieces. He knew that he was fighting for his life. Over him the horde
of beasts rolled and twisted and snarled. He felt the burning pain of
teeth sinking into his flesh. He was smothered; a hundred knives seemed
cutting him into pieces; yet no sound--not a whimper or a cry--came
from him now in the horror and hopelessness of it all.
It would have ended in another half-minute had the struggle not been at
the very edge of the bank. Undermined by the erosion of the spring
floods, a section of this bank suddenly gave way, and with it went
Baree and half the pack. In a flash Baree thought of the water and the
escaping caribou. For a bare instant the cave-in had set him free of
the pack, and in that space he gave a single leap over the gray backs
of his enemies into the deep water of the stream. Close behind him half
a dozen jaws snapped shut on empty air. As it had saved the caribou, so
this strip of water shimmering in the glow of the moon and stars had
saved Baree.
The stream was not more than a hundred feet in width, but it cost Baree
close to a losing struggle to get across it. Until he dragged himself
out on the opposite shore, the extent of his injuries was not impressed
upon him fully. One hind leg, for the time, was useless. His forward
left shoulder was laid open to the bone. His head and body were torn
and cut; and as he dragged himself slowly away from the stream, the
trail he left in the snow was a red path of blood. It trickled from his
panting jaws, between which his tongue was bleeding. It ran down his
legs and flanks and belly, and it dripped from his ears, one of which
was slit clean for two inches as though cut with a knife. His instincts
were dazed, his perception of things clouded as if by a veil drawn
close over his eyes. He did not hear, a few minutes later, the howling
of the disappointed wolf horde on the other side of the river, and he
no longer sensed the existence of moon or stars. Half dead, he dragged
himself on until by chance he came to a clump of dwarf spruce. Into
this he struggled, and then he dropped exhausted.
All that night and until noon the next day Baree lay without moving.
The fever burned in his blood. It flamed high and swift toward death;
then it ebbed slowly, and life conquered. At noon he came forth. He was
weak, and he wobbled on his legs. His hind leg still dragged, and he
was racked with pain. But it was a splendid day. The sun was warm; the
snow was thawing; the sky was like a great blue sea; and the floods of
life coursed warmly again through Baree's veins. But now, for all time,
his desires were changed, and his great quest at an end.
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