A strange humour possessed Carvel as he began the southward journey. He
did not believe in omens, good or bad. Superstition had played a small
part in his life, but he possessed both curiosity and a love for
adventure, and his years of lonely wandering had developed in him a
wonderfully clear mental vision of things, which in other words might be
called singularly active imagination. He knew that some irresistible
force was drawing Baree back into the south—that it was pulling him not
only along a given line of the compass, but to an exact point in that
line. For no reason in particular the situation began to interest him
more and more, and as his time was valueless, and he had no fixed
destination in view, he began to experiment. For the first two days he
marked the dog’s course by compass. It was due southeast. On the third
morning Carvel purposely struck a course straight west. He noted quickly
the change in Baree—his restlessness at first, and after that the
dejected manner in which he followed at his heels. Toward noon Carvel
swung sharply to the south and east again, and almost immediately Baree
regained his old eagerness, and ran ahead of his master.
After this, for many days, Carvel followed the trail of the dog.
“Mebby I’m an idiot, old chap,” he apologized one evening. “But it’s a
bit of fun, after all—an’ I’ve got to hit the line of rail before I can
get over to the mountains, so what’s the difference? I’m game—so long as
you don’t take me back to that chap at Lac Bain. Now—what the devil! Are
you hitting for his trap-line, to get even? If that’s the case——”
He blew out a cloud of smoke from his pipe as he eyed Baree, and Baree,
with his head between his forepaws, eyed him back.
A week later Baree answered Carvel’s question by swinging westward to
give a wide berth to Post Lac Bain. It was mid-afternoon when they
crossed the trail along which Bush McTaggart’s traps and deadfalls had
been set. Baree did not even pause. He headed due south, travelling so
fast that at times he was lost to Carvel’s sight. A suppressed but
intense excitement possessed him, and he whined whenever Carvel stopped
to rest—always with his nose sniffing the wind out of the south.
Springtime, the flowers, the earth turning green, the singing of birds,
and the sweet breaths in the air were bringing him back to that great
Yesterday when he had belonged to Nepeese. In his unreasoning mind there
existed no longer a winter. The long months of cold and hunger were
gone; in the new visionings that filled his brain they were forgotten.
The birds and flowers and the blue skies had come back, and with them
the Willow must surely have returned, and she was waiting for him now,
just over there beyond that rim of green forest.
Something greater than mere curiosity began to take possession of
Carvel. A whimsical humour became a fixed and deeper thought, an
unreasoning anticipation that was accompanied by a certain thrill of
subdued excitement. By the time they reached the old beaver-pond the
mystery of the strange adventure had a firm hold on him. From
Beaver-tooth’s colony Baree led him to the creek along which Wakayoo,
the black bear, had fished, and thence straight to the Gray Loon.
It was early afternoon of a wonderful day. It was so still that the
rippling waters of spring, singing in a thousand rills and streamlets,
filled the forests with a droning music. In the warm sun the crimson
bakneesh glowed like blood. In the open spaces the air was scented with
the perfume of Blue Flowers. In the trees and bushes mated birds were
building their nests. After the long sleep of winter Nature was at work
in all her glory. It was _Unekepesim_, the Mating Moon, the Home
Building Moon—and Baree was going home. Not to matehood—but to Nepeese.
He knew that she was there now, perhaps at the very edge of the chasm
where he had seen her last. They would be playing together again soon,
as they had played yesterday, and the day before, and the day before
that, and in his joy he barked up into Carvel’s face, and urged him to
greater speed. Then they came to the clearing, and once more Baree stood
like a rock. Carvel saw the charred ruins of the burned cabin, and a
moment later the two graves under the tall spruce. He began to
understand as his eyes returned slowly to the waiting, listening dog. A
great swelling rose in his throat, and after a moment or two he said
softly, and with an effort,
“Boy, I guess you’re home.”
Baree did not hear. With his head up and his nose tilted to the blue sky
he was sniffing the air. What was it that came to him with the perfumes
of the forests and the green meadow? Why was it that he trembled now as
he stood there? What was there in the air? Carvel asked himself, and his
questing eyes tried to answer the questions. Nothing. There was death
here—death and desertion, that was all. And then, all at once, there
came from Baree a strange cry—almost a human cry—and he was gone like
the wind.
Carvel had thrown off his pack. He dropped his rifle beside it now, and
followed Baree. He ran swiftly, straight across the open, into the dwarf
balsams, and into a grass-grown path that had once been worn by the
travel of feet. He ran until he was panting for breath, and then
stopped, and listened. He could hear nothing of Baree. But that old worn
trail led on under the forest trees, and he followed it.
Close to the deep, dark pool in which he and the Willow had disported so
often Baree, too, had stopped. He could hear the rippling of water, and
his eyes shone with a gleaming fire as he quested for Nepeese. He
expected to see her there, her slim white body shimmering in some dark
shadow of overhanging spruce, or gleaming suddenly white as snow in one
of the warm plashes of sunlight. His eyes sought out their old
hiding-places; the great split rock on the other side, the shelving
banks under which they used to dive like otter, the spruce boughs that
dipped down to the surface, and in the midst of which the Willow loved
to screen her naked body while he searched the pool for her. And at last
the realization was borne upon him that she was not there, that he had
still farther to go.
He went on to the tepee. The little open space in which they had built
their hidden wigwam was flooded with sunshine that came through a break
in the forest to the west. The tepee was still there. It did not seem
very much changed to Baree. And rising from the ground in front of the
tepee was what had come to him faintly on the still air—the smoke of a
small fire. Over that fire was bending a person, and it did not strike
Baree as amazing, or at all unexpected, that this person should have two
great shining braids down her back. He whined, and at his whine the
Person grew a little rigid, and turned slowly.
Even then it seemed quite the most natural thing in the world that it
should be Nepeese, and none other. He had lost her yesterday. To-day he
had found her. And in answer to his whine there came a sobbing cry
straight out of the soul of the Willow.
* * * * *
Carvel found them there a few minutes later, the dog’s head hugged close
up against the Willow’s breast, and the Willow was crying—crying like a
little child, her face hidden from him on Baree’s neck. He did not
interrupt them, but waited; and as he waited something in the sobbing
voice and the stillness of the forest seemed to whisper to him a bit of
the story of the burned cabin and the two graves, and the meaning of the
Call that had come to Baree from out of the south.