That night there was a new campfire in the open. It was not a small
fire, built with the fear that other eyes might see it, but a fire that
sent its flames high. In the glow of it stood Carvel. And as the fire
had changed from that small smouldering heap over which the Willow had
cooked her dinner, so Carvel, the officially dead outlaw, had changed.
The beard was gone from his face; he had thrown off his caribou-skin
coat; his sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and there was a wild
flush in his face that was not altogether the tanning of wind and sun
and storm, and a glow in his eyes that had not been there for five
years, perhaps never before. His eyes were on Nepeese. She sat in the
firelight, leaning a little toward the blaze, her wonderful hair glowing
warmly in the flash of it. Carvel did not move while she was in that
attitude. He seemed scarcely to breathe. The glow in his eyes grew
deeper—the worship of a man for a woman. Suddenly Nepeese turned and
caught him before he could turn his gaze. There was nothing to hide in
her own eyes. Like her face, they were flushed with a new hope and a new
gladness. Carvel sat down beside her on the birch log, and in his hand
he took one of her thick braids and crumpled it as he talked. At their
feet, watching them, lay Baree.
“To-morrow or the next day I am going to Lac Bain,” he said, a hard and
bitter note back of the gentle worship in his voice. “I will not come
back until I have—killed him.”
The Willow looked straight into the fire. For a time there was a silence
broken only by the crackling of the flames, and in that silence Carvel’s
fingers weaved in and out of the silken strands of the Willow’s hair.
His thoughts flashed back. What a chance he had missed that day on Bush
McTaggart’s trap-line—if he had only known! His jaws set hard as he saw
in the red-hot heart of the fire the mental pictures of the day when the
Factor from Lac Bain had killed Pierrot. She had told him the whole
story. Her flight. Her plunge to what she had thought was certain death
in the icy torrent of the chasm. Her miraculous escape from the
waters—and how she was discovered, nearly dead, by Tuboa, the toothless
old Cree whom Pierrot out of pity had allowed to hunt in part of his
domain. He felt within himself the tragedy and the horror of the one
terrible hour in which the sun had gone out of the world for the Willow,
and in the flames he could see faithful old Tuboa as he called on his
last strength to bear Nepeese over the long miles that lay between the
chasm and his cabin; he caught shifting visions of the weeks that
followed in that cabin, weeks of hunger and of intense cold in which the
Willow’s life hung by a single thread. And at last, when the snows were
deepest, Tuboa had died. Carvel’s fingers clenched in the strands of the
Willow’s braid. A deep breath rose out of his chest, and he said,
staring deep into the fire,
“To-morrow I will go to Lac Bain.”
For a moment Nepeese did not answer. She, too, was looking into the
fire. Then she said:
“Tuboa meant to kill him when the spring came, and he could travel. When
Tuboa died I knew that it was I who must kill him. So I came, with
Tuboa’s gun. It was fresh loaded—yesterday. And—M’sieu _Jeem_”—she
looked up at him, a triumphant glow in her eyes as she added, almost in
a whisper—“You will not go to Lac Bain. _I have sent a messenger._”
“A messenger?”
“Yes, Ookimow Jeem—a messenger. Two days ago. I sent word that I had not
died, but was here—waiting for him—and that I would be _Iskwao_ now, his
wife. Oo-oo, he will come, Ookimow Jeem—he will come fast. And you shall
not kill him. _Non!_” She smiled into his face, and the throb of
Carvel’s heart was like a drum. “The gun is loaded,” she said softly. “I
will shoot.”
“Two days ago,” said Carvel. “And from Lac Bain it is——”
“He will be here to-morrow,” Nepeese answered him. “To-morrow, as the
sun goes down, he will enter the clearing. I know. My blood has been
singing it all day. To-morrow—to-morrow—for he will travel fast, Ookimow
Jeem. Yes, he will come fast.”
Carvel had bent his head. The soft tresses gripped in his fingers were
crushed to his lips. The Willow, looking again into the fire, did not
see. But she _felt_—and her soul was beating like the wings of a bird.
“Ookimow Jeem,” she whispered—a breath, a flutter of the lips so soft
that Carvel heard no sound.
If old Tuboa had been there that night it is possible he would have read
strange warnings in the winds that whispered now and then softly in the
treetops. It was such a night; a night when the Red Gods whisper low
among themselves, a carnival of glory in which even the dipping shadows
and the high stars seemed to quiver with the life of a potent language.
It is barely possible that old Tuboa, with his ninety years behind him,
would have learned something, or that at least he would have _suspected_
a thing which Carvel in his youth and confidence did not see.
To-morrow—he will come to-morrow! The Willow, exultant, had said that.
But to old Tuboa the trees might have whispered, _why not to-night_?
It was midnight when the big moon stood full above the little open in
the forest. In the tepee the Willow was sleeping. In a balsam shadow
back from the fire slept Baree, and still farther back in the edge of a
spruce thicket slept Carvel. Dog and man were tired. They had travelled
far and fast that day, and they heard no sound.
But they had travelled neither so far nor so fast as Bush McTaggart.
Between sunrise and midnight he had come forty miles when he strode out
into the clearing where Pierrot’s cabin had stood. Twice from the edge
of the forest he had called; and now, when he found no answer, he stood
under the light of the moon and listened. Nepeese was to be
here—waiting. He was tired, but exhaustion could not still the fire that
burned in his blood. It had been blazing all day, and now—so near its
realization and its triumph—the old passion was like a drunkening wine
in his veins. Somewhere, near where he stood, Nepeese was waiting for
him, _waiting for him_. Once again he called, his heart beating in a
fierce anticipation as he listened. There was no answer. And then for a
thrilling instant his breath stopped. He sniffed the air—and there came
to him faintly the smell of smoke.
With the first instinct of the forest man he fronted the wind that was
but a faint breath under the starlit skies. He did not call again, but
hastened across the clearing. Nepeese was off there—somewhere—sleeping
beside her fire, and out of him there rose a low cry of exultation. He
came to the edge of the forest; chance directed his steps to the
overgrown trail; he followed it, and the smoke smell came stronger to
his nostrils.
It was the forest man’s instinct, too, that added the element of caution
to his advance. That, and the utter stillness of the night. He broke no
sticks under his feet. He disturbed the brush so quietly that it made no
sound. When he came at last to the little open where Carvel’s fire was
still sending a spiral of spruce-scented smoke up into the air it was
with a stealth that failed even to rouse Baree. Perhaps, deep down in
him, there smouldered an old suspicion; perhaps it was because he wanted
to come to her while she was sleeping. The sight of the tepee made his
heart throb faster. It was light as day where it stood in the moonlight,
and he saw hanging outside it a few bits of woman’s apparel. He advanced
soft-footed as a fox and stood a moment later with his hand on the cloth
flap at the wigwam door, his head bent forward to catch the merest
breath of sound. He could hear her breathing. For an instant his face
turned so that the moonlight struck his eyes. They were aflame with a
mad fire. Then, still very quietly, he drew aside the flap at the door.
It could not have been sound that roused Baree, hidden in the black
balsam shadow a dozen paces away. Perhaps it was scent. His nostrils
twitched first; then he awoke. For a few seconds his eyes glared at the
bent figure in the tepee door. He knew that it was not Carvel. The old
smell—the man-beast’s smell, filled his nostrils like a hated poison. He
sprang to his feet and stood with his lips snarling back slowly from his
long fangs. McTaggart had disappeared. From inside the tepee there came
a sound; a sudden movement of bodies, a startled ejaculation of one
awakening from sleep—and then a cry, a low, half-smothered, frightened
cry, and in response to that cry Baree shot out from under the balsam
with a sound in his throat that had in it the note of death.
* * * * *
In the edge of the spruce thicket Carvel rolled uneasily. Strange sounds
were rousing him, cries that in his exhaustion came to him as if in a
dream. At last he sat up, and then in sudden horror leaped to his feet
and rushed toward the tepee. Nepeese was in the open, crying the name
she had given him—“_Ookimow Jeem—Ookimow—Jeem—Ookimow Jeem_——” She was
standing there white and slim, her eyes with the blaze of the stars in
them, and when she saw Carvel she flung out her arms to him, still
crying:
“Ookimow Jeem—Oo-oo, Ookimow Jeem——”
In the tepee he heard the rage of a beast, the moaning cries of a man.
He forgot that it was only last night he had come, and with a cry he
swept the Willow to his breast, and the Willow’s arms tightened round
his neck as she moaned:
“Ookimow Jeem—it is the man-beast—in there! It is the man-beast from Lac
Bain—and Baree——”
Truth flashed upon Carvel, and he caught Nepeese up in his arms and ran
away with her from the sounds that had grown sickening and horrible. In
the spruce thicket he put her feet once more to the ground. Her arms
were still tight around his neck; he felt the wild terror of her body as
it throbbed against him; her breath was sobbing, and her eyes were on
his face. He drew her closer, and suddenly he crushed his face down
close against hers and felt for an instant the warm thrill of her lips
against his own. And he heard the whisper, soft and trembling.
“Ooo-oo, _Ookimow Jeem_——”
When Carvel returned to the fire, alone, his Colt in his hand, Baree was
in front of the tepee waiting for him. Carvel picked up a burning brand
and entered the wigwam. When he came out his face was white. He tossed
the brand in the fire, and went back to Nepeese. He had wrapped her in
his blankets, and now he knelt down beside her and put his arms about
her.
“He is dead, Nepeese.”
“Dead, Ookimow Jeem?”
“Yes. Baree killed him.”
She did not seem to breathe. Gently, with his lips in her hair, Carvel
whispered his plans for their paradise.
“No one will know, my sweetheart. To-night I will bury him and burn the
tepee. To-morrow we will start for Nelson House, where there is a
Missioner. And after that—we will come back—and I will build a new cabin
where the old one burned. _Do you love me, ka sakahet?_”
“Oui—yes—Ookimow Jeem—I love you——”
Suddenly there came an interruption. Baree at last was giving his cry of
triumph. It rose to the stars; it wailed over the roofs of the forests
and filled the quiet skies—a wolfish howl of exultation, of achievement,
of vengeance fulfilled. Its echoes died slowly away, and silence came
again. A great peace whispered in the soft breath of the treetops. Out
of the north came the mating call of a loon. About Carvel’s shoulders
the Willow’s arms crept closer. And Carvel, out of his heart, thanked
God.
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
End of Project Gutenberg's Baree, Son of Kazan, by James Oliver Curwood