Jim Carvel held out his hand, and the snarl that was in Baree’s throat
died away. The man rose to his feet. He stood there, looking in the
direction taken by Bush McTaggart, and chuckled in a curious, exultant
sort of way. There was friendliness even in that chuckle. There was
friendliness in his eyes and in the shine of his teeth as he looked
again at Baree. About him there was something that seemed to make the
gray day brighter, that seemed to warm the chill air—a strange something
that radiated cheer and hope and comradeship just as a hot stove sends
out the glow of heat. Baree felt it. For the first time since the two
men had come his trap-torn body lost its tenseness; his back sagged; his
teeth clicked as he shivered in his agony. To _this_ man he betrayed his
weakness. In his bloodshot eyes there was a hungering look as he watched
Carvel—the self-confessed outlaw. And Jim Carvel again held out his
hand—much nearer this time.
“You poor devil,” he said, the smile going out of his face. “You poor
devil!”
The words were like a caress to Baree—the first he had known since the
loss of Nepeese and Pierrot. He dropped his head until his jaw lay flat
in the snow. Carvel could see the blood dripping slowly from it.
“You poor devil!” he repeated.
There was no fear in the way he put forth his hand. It was the
confidence of a great sincerity and a great compassion. It touched
Baree’s head and patted it in a brotherly fashion, and then—slowly and
with a bit more caution—it went to the trap fastened to Baree’s forepaw.
In his half-crazed brain Baree was fighting to understand things, and
the truth came finally when he felt the steel jaws of the trap open, and
he drew forth his maimed foot. He did then what he had done to no other
creature but Nepeese. Just once his hot tongue shot out and licked
Carvel’s hand. The man laughed. With his powerful hands he opened the
other traps, and Baree was free.
For a few moments he lay without moving, his eyes fixed on the man.
Carvel had seated himself on the snow-covered end of a birch log and was
filling his pipe. Baree watched him light it; he noted with new interest
the first purplish cloud of smoke that left Carvel’s mouth. The man was
not more than the length of two trap-chains away—and he grinned at
Baree.
“Screw up your nerve, old chap,” he encouraged. “No bones broke. Just a
little stiff. Mebby we’d better—get out.”
He turned his face in the direction of Lac Bain. The suspicion was in
his mind that McTaggart might turn back. Perhaps that same suspicion was
impressed upon Baree, for when Carvel looked at him again he was on his
feet, staggering a bit as he gained his equilibrium. In another moment
the outlaw had swung the pack-sack from his shoulders and was opening
it. He thrust in his hand and drew out a chunk of raw, red meat.
“Killed it this morning,” he explained to Baree. “Yearling bull, tender
as partridge—and that’s as fine a sweetbread as ever came out from under
a backbone. Try it!”
He tossed the flesh to Baree. There was no equivocation in the manner of
its acceptance. Baree was famished—and the meat was flung to him by a
friend. He buried his teeth in it. His jaws crunched it. New fire leapt
into his blood as he feasted, but not for an instant did his reddened
eyes leave the other’s face. Carvel replaced his pack. He rose to his
feet, took up his rifle, slipped on his snowshoes, and fronted the
north.
“Come on, Boy,” he said. “We’ve got to travel.”
It was a matter-of-fact invitation, as though the two had been
travelling companions for a long time. It was, perhaps, not only an
invitation but partly a command. It puzzled Baree. For a full half
minute he stood motionless in his tracks gazing at Carvel as he strode
into the north. A sudden convulsive twitching shot through Baree; he
swung his head toward Lac Bain; he looked again at Carvel, and a whine
that was scarcely more than a breath came out of his throat. The man was
just about to disappear into the thick spruce. He paused, and looked
back.
“Coming, Boy?”
Even at that distance Baree could see him grinning affably; he saw the
outstretched hand, and the voice stirred new sensations in him. It was
not like Pierrot’s voice. He had never loved Pierrot. Neither was it
soft and sweet like the Willow’s. He had known only a few men, and all
of them he had regarded with distrust. But this was a voice that
disarmed him. It was lureful in its appeal. He wanted to answer it. He
was filled with a desire, all at once, to follow close at the heels of
this stranger. For the first time in his life a craving for the
friendship of man possessed him. He did not move until Jim Carvel
entered the spruce. Then he followed.
That night they were camped in a dense growth of cedars and balsams ten
miles north of Bush McTaggart’s trap-line. For two hours it had snowed,
and their trail was covered. It was still snowing, but not a flake of
the white deluge sifted down through the thick canopy of boughs. Carvel
had put up his small silk tent, and had built a fire; their supper was
over, and Baree lay on his belly facing the outlaw, almost within reach
of his hand. With his back to a tree Carvel was smoking luxuriously. He
had thrown off his cap and his coat, and in the warm fireglow he looked
almost boyishly young. But even in that glow his jaws lost none of their
squareness, nor his eyes their clear alertness.
“Seems good to have some one to talk to,” he was saying to Baree. “Some
one who can understand, an’ keep his mouth shut. Did you ever want to
howl, an’ didn’t dare? Well, that’s me. Sometimes I’ve been on the point
of bustin’ because I wanted to talk to some one, an’ couldn’t.”
He rubbed his hands together, and held them out toward the fire. Baree
watched his movements and listened intently to every sound that escaped
his lips. His eyes had in them now a dumb sort of worship, a look that
warmed Carvel’s heart and did away with the vast loneliness and
emptiness of the night. Baree had dragged himself nearer to the man’s
feet, and suddenly Carvel leaned over and patted his head.
“I’m a bad one, old chap,” he chuckled. “You haven’t got it on me—not a
bit. Want to know what happened?” He waited a moment, and Baree looked
at him steadily. Then Carvel went on, as if speaking to a human, “Let’s
see—it was five years ago, five years this December, just before
Christmas time. Had a Dad. Fine old chap, my Dad was. No Mother—just the
Dad, an’ when you added us up we made just One. Understand? And along
came a white-striped skunk named Hardy and shot him one day because Dad
had worked against him in politics. Out an’ out murder. An’ they didn’t
hang that skunk! No, sir, they didn’t hang him. He had too much money,
an’ too many friends in politics, an’ they let ’im off with two years in
the penitentiary. But he didn’t get there. No—s’elp me God, he didn’t
get there!”
Carvel was twisting his hands until his knuckles cracked. An exultant
smile lighted up his face, and his eyes flashed back the firelight.
Baree drew a deep breath—a mere coincidence; but it was a tense moment
for all that.
“No, he didn’t get to the penitentiary,” went on Carvel, looking
straight at Baree again. “Yours truly knew what that meant, old chap.
He’d have been pardoned inside a year. An’ there was my Dad, the biggest
half of me, in his grave. So I just went up to that white-striped skunk
right there before the Judge’s eyes, an’ the lawyers’ eyes, an’ the eyes
of all his dear relatives an’ friends—_and I killed him_! And I got
away. Was out through a window before they woke up, hit for the bush
country, and have been eating up the trails ever since. An’ I guess God
was with me, Boy. For He did a queer thing to help me out summer before
last, just when the Mounties were after me hardest an’ it looked pretty
black. Man was found drowned down in the Reindeer Country, right where
they thought I was cornered; an’ the good Lord made that man look so
much like me that he was buried under my name. So I’m officially dead,
old chap. I don’t need to be afraid any more so long as I don’t get too
familiar with people for a year or so longer, and ’way down inside me
I’ve liked to believe God fixed it up in that way to help me out of a
bad hole. What’s _your_ opinion? Eh?”
He leaned forward for an answer. Baree had listened. Perhaps, in a way,
he had understood. But it was another sound than Carvel’s voice that
came to his ears now. With his head close to the ground he heard it
quite distinctly. He whined, and the whine ended in a snarl so low that
Carvel just caught the warning note in it. He straightened. He stood up
then, and faced the south. Baree stood beside him, his legs tense and
his spine bristling.
After a moment Carvel said:
“Relatives of yours, old chap. Wolves.”
He went into the tent for his rifle and cartridges.