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Page 60
All through the month of August Baree made the beaver pond his
headquarters. At times his excursions kept him away for two or three
days at a time. These journeys were always into the north, sometimes a
little east and sometimes a little west, but never again into the
south. And at last, early in September, he left the beaver pond for
good.
For many days his wanderings carried him in no one particular
direction. He followed the hunting, living chiefly on rabbits and that
simple-minded species of partridge known as the "fool hen." This diet,
of course, was given variety by other things as they happened to come
his way. Wild currants and raspberries were ripening, and Baree was
fond of these. He also liked the bitter berries of the mountain ash,
which, along with the soft balsam and spruce pitch which he licked with
his tongue now and then, were good medicine for him. In shallow water
he occasionally caught a fish. Now and then he hazarded a cautious
battle with a porcupine, and if he was successful he feasted on the
tenderest and most luscious of all the flesh that made up his menu.
Twice in September he killed young deer. The big "burns" that he
occasionally came to no longer held terrors for him; in the midst of
plenty he forgot the days in which he had gone hungry. In October he
wandered as far west as the Geikie River, and then northward to
Wollaston Lake, which was a good hundred miles north of the Gray Loon.
The first week in November he turned south again, following the Canoe
River for a distance, and then swinging westward along a twisting creek
called The Little Black Bear with No Tail.
More than once during these weeks Baree came into touch with man, but,
with the exception of the Cree hunter at the upper end of Wollaston
Lake, no man had seen him. Three times in following the Geikie he lay
crouched in the brush while canoes passed. Half a dozen times, in the
stillness of night, he nosed about cabins and tepees in which there was
life, and once he came so near to the Hudson's Bay Company post at
Wollaston that he could hear the barking of dogs and the shouting of
their masters.
And always he was seeking--questing for the thing that had gone out of
his life. At the thresholds of the cabins he sniffed; outside of the
tepees he circled close, gathering the wind. The canoes he watched with
eyes in which there was a hopeful gleam. Once he thought the wind
brought him the scent of Nepeese, and all at once his legs grew weak
under his body and his heart seemed to stop beating. It was only for a
moment or two. She came out of the tepee--an Indian girl with her hands
full of willow work--and Baree slunk away unseen.
It was almost December when Lerue, a half-breed from Lac Bain, saw
Baree's footprints in freshly fallen snow, and a little later caught a
flash of him in the bush.
"Mon Dieu, I tell you his feet are as big as my hand, and he is as
black as a raven's wing with the sun on it!" he exclaimed in the
company's store at Lac Bain. "A fox? Non! He is half as big as a bear.
A wolf--oui! And black as the devil, m'sieus."
McTaggart was one of those who heard. He was putting his signature in
ink to a letter he had written to the company when Lerue's words came
to him. His hand stopped so suddenly that a drop of ink spattered on
the letter. Through him there ran a curious shiver as he looked over at
the half-breed. Just then Marie came in. McTaggart had brought her back
from her tribe. Her big, dark eyes had a sick look in them, and some of
her wild beauty had gone since a year ago.
"He was gone like--that!" Lerue was saying, with a snap of his fingers.
He saw Marie, and stopped.
"Black, you say?" McTaggart said carelessly, without lifting his eyes
from his writing. "Did he not bear some dog mark?"
Lerue shrugged his shoulders.
"He was gone like the wind, m'sieu. But he was a wolf."
With scarcely a sound that the others could hear Marie had whispered
into the factor's ear, and folding his letter McTaggart rose quickly
and left the store. He was gone an hour. Lerue and the others were
puzzled. It was not often that Marie came into the store. It was not
often that they saw her at all. She remained hidden in the factor's log
house, and each time that he saw her Lerue thought that her face was a
little thinner than the last, and her eyes bigger and hungrier looking.
In his own heart there was a great yearning.
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