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Page 58
Baree's quest for Nepeese became now more or less involuntary, a sort
of daily routine. For a week he made his burrow in the dog corral, and
at least twice between dawn and darkness he would go to the birchbark
tepee and the chasm. His trail, soon beaten hard in the snow, became as
fixed as Pierrot's trap line. It cut straight through the forest to the
tepee, swinging slightly to the east so that it crossed the frozen
surface of the Willow's swimming pool. From the tepee it swung in a
circle through a part of the forest where Nepeese had frequently
gathered armfuls of crimson fireflowers, and then to the chasm. Up and
down the edge of the gorge it went, down into the little cup at the
bottom of the chasm, and thence straight back to the dog corral.
And then, of a sudden, Baree made a change. He spent a night in the
tepee. After that, whenever he was at the Gray Loon, during the day he
always slept in the tepee. The two blankets were his bed--and they were
a part of Nepeese. And there, all through the long winter, he waited.
If Nepeese had returned in February and could have taken him unaware,
she would have found a changed Baree. He was more than ever like a
wolf; yet he never gave the wolf howl now, and always he snarled deep
in his throat when he heard the cry of the pack. For several weeks the
old trap line had supplied him with meat, but now he hunted. The tepee,
in and out, was scattered with fur and bones. Once--alone--he caught a
young deer in deep snow and killed it. Again, in the heart of a fierce
February storm, he pursued a bull caribou so closely that it plunged
over a cliff and broke its neck. He lived well, and in size and
strength he was growing swiftly into a giant of his kind. In another
six months he would be as large as Kazan, and his jaws were almost as
powerful, even now.
Three times that winter Baree fought--once with a lynx that sprang down
upon him from a windfall while he was eating a freshly killed rabbit,
and twice with two lone wolves. The lynx tore him unmercifully before
it fled into the windfall. The younger of the wolves he killed; the
other fight was a draw. More and more he became an outcast, living
alone with his dreams and his smoldering hopes.
And Baree did dream. Many times, as he lay in the tepee, he would hear
the voice of Nepeese. He would hear her sweet voice calling, her
laughter, the sound of his name. and often he would start up to his
feet--the old Baree for a thrilling moment or two--only to lie down in
his nest again with a low, grief-filled whine. And always when he heard
the snap of a twig or some other sound in the forest, it was thought of
Nepeese that flashed first into his brain. Some day she would return.
That belief was a part of his existence as much as the sun and the moon
and the stars.
The winter passed, and spring came, and still Baree continued to haunt
his old trails, even going now and then over the old trap line as far
as the first of the two cabins. The traps were rusted and sprung now;
the thawing snow disclosed bones and feathers between their jaws. Under
the deadfalls were remnants of fur, and out on the ice of the lakes
were picked skeletons of foxes and wolves that had taken the poison
baits. The last snow went. The swollen streams sang in the forests and
canyons. The grass turned green, and the first flowers came.
Surely this was the time for Nepeese to come home! He watched for her
expectantly. He went still more frequently to their swimming pool in
the forest, and he hung closely to the burned cabin and the dog corral.
Twice he sprang into the pool and whined as he swam about, as though
she surely must join him in their old water frolic. And now, as the
spring passed and summer came, there settled upon him slowly the gloom
and misery of utter hopelessness. The flowers were all out now, and
even the bakneesh vines glowed like red fire in the woods. Patches of
green were beginning to hide the charred heap where the cabin had
stood, and the blue-flower vines that covered the princess mother's
grave were reaching out toward Pierrot's, as if the princess mother
herself were the spirit of them.
All these things were happening, and the birds had mated and nested,
and still Nepeese did not come! And at last something broke inside of
Baree, his last hope, perhaps, his last dream; and one day he bade
good-bye to the Gray Loon.
No one can say what it cost him to go. No one can say how he fought
against the things that were holding him to the tepee, the old swimming
pool, the familiar paths in the forest, and the two graves that were
not so lonely now under the tall spruce. He went. He had no
reason--simply went. It may be that there is a Master whose hand guides
the beast as well as the man, and that we know just enough of this
guidance to call it instinct. For, in dragging himself away, Baree
faced the Great Adventure.
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