Baree’s fight with Oohoomisew was good medicine for him. It not only
gave him great confidence in himself, but it also cleared the fever of
ugliness from his blood. He no longer snapped and snarled at things as
he went on through the night.
It was a wonderful night. The moon was straight overhead, and the sky
was filled with stars, so that in the open spaces the light was almost
like that of day, except that it was softer and more beautiful. It was
very still. There was no wind in the treetops, and it seemed to Baree
that the howl he had given must have echoed to the end of the world.
Now and then Baree heard a sound—and always he stopped, attentive and
listening. Far away he heard the long, soft mooing of a cow moose; he
heard a great splashing in the water of a small lake that he came to,
and once there came to him the sharp cracking of horn against horn—two
bucks settling a little difference of opinion a quarter of a mile away.
But it was always the wolf-howl that made him sit and listen longest,
his heart beating with a strange impulse which he did not as yet
understand. It was the call of his breed, growing in him slowly but
insistently.
He was still a wanderer—_pupamootao_, the Indians call it. It is this
“wander spirit” that inspires for a time nearly every creature of the
wild as soon as it is able to care for itself—nature’s scheme, perhaps,
for doing away with too close family relations and possibly dangerous
interbreeding. Baree, like the young wolf seeking new hunting-grounds,
or the young fox discovering a new world, had no reason or method in his
wandering. He was simply “travelling”—going on. He wanted something
which he could not find. The wolf-note brought it to him.
The stars and the moon filled Baree with a yearning for this something.
The distant sounds impinged upon him his great aloneness. And instinct
told him that only by questing could he find. It was not so much Kazan
and Gray Wolf that he missed now—not so much motherhood and home as it
was companionship. Now that he had fought the wolfish rage out of him in
his battle with Oohoomisew, the dog part of him had come into its own
again—the lovable half of him, the part that wanted to snuggle up near
something that was alive and friendly, small odds whether it wore
feathers or fur, was clawed or hoofed.
He was sore from the Willow’s bullet, and he was sore from battle, and
toward dawn he lay down under a shelter of alders at the edge of a
second small lake and rested until midday. Then he began questing in the
reeds and close to the pond-lilies for food. He found a dead jackfish,
partly eaten by a mink, and finished it.
His wound was much less painful this afternoon, and by nightfall he
scarcely noticed it at all. Since his almost tragic end at the hands of
Nepeese, he had been travelling in a general northeasterly direction,
following instinctively the run of the water-ways; but his progress had
been slow, and when darkness came again he was not more than eight or
ten miles from the hole into which he had fallen after the Willow had
shot him.
Baree did not travel far this night. The fact that his wound had come
with dusk, and his fight with Oohoomisew still later, filled him with
caution. Experience had taught him that the dark shadows and the black
pits in the forest were possible ambuscades of danger. He was no longer
afraid, as he had once been, but he had had fighting enough for a time,
and so he accepted circumspection as the better part of valour and held
himself aloof from the perils of darkness. It was a strange instinct
that made him seek his bed on the top of a huge rock up which he had
some difficulty in climbing. Perhaps it was a harkening back to the days
of long ago when Gray Wolf, in her first motherhood, sought refuge at
the summit of the Sun Rock which towered high above the forest-world of
which she and Kazan were a part, and where later she was blinded in her
battle with the lynx.
Baree’s rock, instead of rising for a hundred feet or more straight up,
was possibly as high as a man’s head. It was in the edge of the
creek-bottom, with the spruce forest close at his back. For many hours
he did not sleep, but lay keenly alert, his ears tuned to catch every
sound that came out of the dark world about him. There was more than
curiosity in his alertness to-night. His education had broadened
immensely in one way: he had learned that he was a very small part of
all this wonderful earth that lay under the stars and the moon, and he
was keenly alive with the desire to become better acquainted with it
without any more fighting or hurt. To-night he knew what it meant when
he saw now and then gray shadows float silently out of the forest into
the moonlight—the owls, monsters of the breed with which he had fought.
He heard the crackling of hoofed feet and the smashing of heavy bodies
in the underbrush. He heard again the mooing of the moose. Voices came
to him that he had not heard before—the sharp _yap-yap-yap_ of a fox,
the unearthly, laughing cry of a great Northern loon on a lake half a
mile away, the scream of a lynx that came floating through miles of
forest, the low, soft croaks of the nighthawks between himself and the
stars. He heard strange whisperings in the treetops—whisperings of the
winds; and once, in the heart of a dead stillness, a buck whistled
shrilly close behind his rock—and at the wolf-scent in the air shot away
in a terror-stricken gray streak.
All these sounds held their new meaning for Baree. Swiftly he was coming
into his knowledge of the wilderness. His eyes gleamed; his blood
thrilled. For many minutes at a time he scarcely moved. But of all the
sounds that came to him, the wolf-cry thrilled him most. Again and again
he listened to it. At times it was far away, so far that it was like a
whisper, dying away almost before it reached him; and then again it
would come to him full-throated, hot with the breath of the chase,
calling him to the red thrill of the hunt, to the wild orgy of torn
flesh and running blood—calling, calling, calling. That was it, calling
him to his own kin, to the bone of his bone and the flesh of his
flesh—to the wild, fierce hunting-packs of his mother’s tribe! It was
Gray Wolf’s voice seeking for him in the night—Gray Wolf’s blood
inviting him to the Brotherhood of the Pack.
Baree trembled as he listened. In his throat he whined softly. He edged
to the sheer face of the rock. He wanted to go; nature was urging him to
go. But the call of the wild was struggling against odds; for in him was
the dog, with its generations of subdued and sleeping instincts—and all
that night the dog in him kept Baree to the top of his rock.
Next morning Baree found many crawfish along the creek, and he feasted
on their succulent flesh until he felt that he would never be hungry
again. Nothing had tasted quite so good since he had eaten the partridge
of which he had robbed Sekoosew the ermine.
In the middle of the afternoon Baree came into a part of the forest that
was very quiet and very peaceful. The creek had deepened. In places its
banks swept out until they formed small ponds. Twice he made
considerable detours to get around these ponds. He travelled very
quietly, listening and watching. Not since the ill-fated day he had left
the old windfall had he felt quite so much at home as now. It seemed to
him that at last he was treading country which he knew, and where he
would find friends. Perhaps this was another miracle-mystery of
instinct—of nature. For he was in old Beaver-tooth’s domain. It was here
that his father and mother had hunted in the days before he was born. It
was not far from here that Kazan and Beaver-tooth had fought that mighty
duel under water, from which Kazan had escaped with his life without
another breath to lose.
Baree would never know these things. He would never know that he was
travelling over old trails. But something deep in him gripped at him
strangely. He sniffed the air, as if in it he found the scent of
familiar things. It was only a faint breath—an indefinable promise that
brought him to the point of a mysterious anticipation.
The forest grew deeper. It was wonderful. There was no undergrowth, and
travelling under the trees was like being in a vast, mystery-filled
cavern through the roof of which the light of day broke softly,
brightened here and there by golden splashes of the sun. For a mile
Baree made his way quietly through this forest. He saw nothing but a few
winged flittings of birds; there was almost no sound. Then he came to a
still larger pond. Around this pond there was a thick growth of alders
and willows; the larger trees had thinned out. He saw the glimmer of
afternoon sunlight on the water—and then, all at once, he heard life.
There had been few changes in Beaver-tooth’s colony since the days of
his feud with Kazan and the otters. Old Beaver-tooth was still older. He
was fatter. He slept a great deal, and perhaps he was less cautious. He
was dozing on the great mud-and-brushwood dam of which he had been
engineer-in-chief, when Baree came out softly on a high bank thirty or
forty feet away. So noiseless had Baree been that none of the beavers
had seen or heard him. He squatted himself flat on his belly, hidden
behind a tuft of grass, and with eager interest watched every movement.
Beaver-tooth was rousing himself. He stood on his short legs for a
moment; then he tilted himself up on his broad, flat tail like a soldier
at attention, and with a sudden whistle dived into the pond with a great
splash.
In another moment it seemed to Baree that the pond was alive with
beavers. Heads and bodies appeared and disappeared, rushing this way and
that through the water in a manner that amazed and puzzled him. It was
the colony’s evening frolic. Tails hit the water like flat boards. Odd
whistlings rose above the splashing—and then as suddenly as it had
begun, the play came to an end. There were probably twenty beavers, not
counting the young, and as if guided by a common signal—something which
Baree had not heard—they became so quiet that hardly a sound could be
heard in the pond. A few of them sank under the water and disappeared
entirely, but most of them Baree could watch as they drew themselves out
on shore.
The beavers lost no time in getting at their labour, and Baree watched
and listened without so much as rustling a blade of the grass in which
he was concealed. He was trying to understand. He was striving to place
these curious and comfortable-looking creatures in his knowledge of
things. They did not alarm him; he felt no uneasiness at their number or
size. His stillness was not the quiet of discretion, but rather of a
strange and growing desire to get better acquainted with this curious
four-legged brotherhood of the pond. Already they had begun to make the
big forest less lonely for him. And then, close under him—not more than
ten feet from where he lay—he saw something that almost gave voice to
the puppyish longing for companionship that was in him.
Down there, on a clean strip of the shore that rose out of the soft mud
of the pond, waddled fat little Umisk and three of his playmates. Umisk
was just about Baree’s age, perhaps a week or two younger. But he was
fully as heavy, and almost as wide as he was long. Nature can produce no
four-footed creature that is more lovable than a baby beaver, unless it
is a baby bear; and Umisk would have taken first prize at any beaver
baby-show in the world. His three companions were a bit smaller. They
came waddling from behind a low willow, making queer little chuckling
noises, their little flat tails dragging like tiny sledges behind them.
They were fat and furry, and mighty friendly looking to Baree, and his
heart beat a sudden swift _pit-a-pat_ of joy.
But Baree did not move. He scarcely breathed. And then, suddenly, Umisk
turned on one of his playmates and bowled him over. Instantly the other
two were on Umisk, and the four little beavers rolled over and over,
kicking with their short feet and spatting with their tails, and all the
time emitting soft little squeaking cries. Baree knew that it was not
fight but frolic. He rose up on his feet. He forgot where he was—forgot
everything in the world but those playing, furry balls. For the moment
all the hard training nature had been giving him was lost. He was no
longer a fighter, no longer a hunter, no longer a seeker after food. He
was a puppy, and in him there rose a desire that was greater than
hunger. He wanted to go down there with Umisk and his little chums and
roll and play. He wanted to tell them, if such a thing were possible,
that he had lost his mother and his home, and that he had been having a
mighty hard time of it, and that he would like to stay with them and
their mothers and fathers if they didn’t care.
In his throat there came the least bit of a whine. It was so low that
Umisk and his playmates did not hear it. They were tremendously busy.
Softly Baree took his first step toward them, and then another—and at
last he stood on the narrow strip of shore within half a dozen feet of
them. His sharp little ears were pitched forward, and he was wiggling
his tail as fast as he could, and every muscle in his body was trembling
in anticipation.
It was then that Umisk saw him, and his fat little body became suddenly
as motionless as a stone.
“Hello!” said Baree, wiggling his whole body and talking as plainly as a
human tongue could talk. “Do you care if I play with you?”
Umisk made no response. His three playmates now had their eyes on Baree.
They didn’t make a move. They looked stunned. Four pairs of staring,
wondering eyes were fixed on the stranger.
Baree made another effort. He grovelled on his fore-legs, while his tail
and hind-legs continued to wiggle, and with a sniff he grabbed a bit of
stick between his teeth.
“Come on—let me in,” he urged. “I know how to play!”
He tossed the stick in the air as if to prove what he was saying, and
gave a little yap.
Umisk and his brothers were like dummies.
And then, of a sudden, some one saw Baree. It was a big beaver swimming
down the pond with a sapling timber for the new dam that was under way.
Instantly he loosed his hold and faced the shore. And then, like the
report of a rifle, there came the crack of his big flat tail on the
water—the beaver’s signal of danger that on a quiet night can be heard
half a mile away.
“_Danger_,” it warned. “_Danger—danger—danger!_”
Scarcely had the signal gone forth when tails were cracking in all
directions—in the pond, in the hidden canals, in the thick willows and
alders. To Umisk and his companions they said:
“_Run for your lives!_”
Baree stood rigid and motionless now. In amazement he watched the four
little beavers plunge into the pond and disappear. He heard the sounds
of other and heavier bodies striking the water. And then there followed
a strange and disquieting silence. Softly Baree whined, and his whine
was almost a sobbing cry. Why had Umisk and his little mates run away
from him? What had he done that they didn’t want to make friends with
him? A great loneliness swept over him—a loneliness greater even than
that of his first night away from his mother. The last of the sun faded
out of the sky as he stood there. Darker shadows crept over the pond. He
looked into the forest, where night was gathering—and with another
whining cry he slunk back into it. He had not found friendship. He had
not found comradeship. And his heart was very sad.