A moment later the factor from Lac Bain stood at the edge of the chasm.
His voice had called out in a hoarse bellow--a wild cry of disbelief
and horror that had formed the Willow's name as she disappeared. He
looked down, clutching his huge red hands and staring in ghastly
suspense at the boiling water and black rocks far below. There was
nothing there now--no sign of her, no last flash of her pale face and
streaming hair in the white foam. And she had done THAT--to save
herself from him!
The soul of the man-beast turned sick within him, so sick that he
staggered back, his vision blinded and his legs tottering under him. He
had killed Pierrot, and it had been a triumph. All his life he had
played the part of the brute with a stoicism and cruelty that had known
no shock--nothing like this that overwhelmed him now, numbing him to
the marrow of his bones until he stood like one paralyzed. He did not
see Baree. He did not hear the dog's whining cries at the edge of the
chasm. For a few moments the world turned black for him. And then,
dragging himself out of his stupor, he ran frantically along the edge
of the gorge, looking down wherever his eyes could see the water,
striving for a glimpse of her. At last it grew too deep. There was no
hope. She was gone--and she had faced that to escape him!
He mumbled that fact over and over again, stupidly, thickly, as though
his brain could grasp nothing beyond it. She was dead. And Pierrot was
dead. And he, in a few minutes, had accomplished it all.
He turned back toward the cabin--not by the trail over which he had
pursued Nepeese, but straight through the thick bush. Great flakes of
snow had begun to fall. He looked at the sky, where banks of dark
clouds were rolling up from the south and east. The sun disappeared.
Soon there would be a storm--a heavy snowstorm. The big flakes falling
on his naked hands and face set his mind to work. It was lucky for him,
this storm. It would cover everything--the fresh trails, even the grave
he would dig for Pierrot.
It does not take such a man as the factor long to recover from a moral
concussion. By the time he came in sight of the cabin his mind was
again at work on physical things--on the necessities of the situation.
The appalling thing, after all, was not that both Pierrot and Nepeese
were dead, but that his dream was shattered. It was not that Nepeese
was dead, but that he had lost her. This was his vital disappointment.
The other thing--his crime--it was easy to destroy all traces of that.
It was not sentiment that made him dig Pierrot's grave close to the
princess mother's under the tall spruce. It was not sentiment that made
him dig the grave at all, but caution. He buried Pierrot decently. Then
he poured Pierrot's stock of kerosene where it would be most effective
and touched a match to it. He stood in the edge of the forest until the
cabin was a mass of flames. The snow was falling thickly. The freshly
made grave was a white mound, and the trails were filling up with new
snow. For the physical things he had done there was no fear in Bush
McTaggart's heart as he turned back toward Lac Bain. No one would ever
look into the grave of Pierrot Du Quesne. And there was no one to
betray him if such a miracle happened. But of one thing his black soul
would never be able to free itself. Always he would see the pale,
triumphant face of the Willow as she stood facing him in that moment of
her glory when, even as she was choosing death rather than him, he had
cried to himself: "Ah! Is she not wonderful!"
As Bush McTaggart had forgotten Baree, so Baree had forgotten the
factor from Lac Bain. When McTaggart had run along the edge of the
chasm, Baree had squatted himself in the trodden plot of snow where
Nepeese had last stood, his body stiffened and his forefeet braced as
he looked down. He had seen her take the leap. Many times that summer
he had followed her in her daring dives into the deep, quiet water of
the pool. But this was a tremendous distance. She had never dived into
a place like that before. He could see the black shapes of the rocks,
appearing and disappearing in the whirling foam like the heads of
monsters at play. The roar of the water filled him with dread. His eyes
caught the swift rush of crumbled ice between the rock walls. And she
had gone down there!
He had a great desire to follow her, to jump in, as he had always
jumped in after her in previous times. She was surely down there, even
though he could not see her. Probably she was playing among the rocks
and hiding herself in the white froth and wondering why he didn't come.
But he hesitated--hesitated with his head and neck over the abyss, and
his forefeet giving way a little in the snow. With an effort he dragged
himself back and whined. He caught the fresh scent of McTaggart's
moccasins in the snow, and the whine changed slowly into a long snarl.
He looked over again. Still he could not see her. He barked--the short,
sharp signal with which he always called her. There was no answer.
Again and again he barked, and always there was nothing but the roar of
the water that came back to him. Then for a few moments he stood back,
silent and listening, his body shivering with the strange dread that
was possessing him.
The snow was falling now, and McTaggart had returned to the cabin.
After a little Baree followed in the trail he had made along the edge
of the chasm, and wherever McTaggart had stopped to peer over, Baree
paused also. For a space his hatred of the man was lost in his desire
to join the Willow, and he continued along the gorge until, a quarter
of a mile beyond where the factor had last looked into it, he came to
the narrow trail down which he and Nepeese had many time adventured in
quest of rock violets. The twisting path that led down the face of the
cliff was filled with snow now, but Baree made his way through it until
at last he stood at the edge of the unfrozen torrent. Nepeese was not
here. He whined, and barked again, but this time there was in his
signal to her an uneasy repression, a whimpering note which told that
he did not expect a reply. For five minutes after that he sat on his
haunches in the snow, stolid as a rock. What it was that came down out
of the dark mystery and tumult of the chasm to him, what spirit
whispers of nature that told him the truth, it is beyond the power of
reason to explain. But he listened, and he looked; and his muscles
twitched as the truth grew in him. And at last he raised his head
slowly until his black muzzle pointed to the white storm in the sky,
and out of his throat there went forth the quavering, long-drawn howl
of the husky who mourns outside the tepee of a master who is newly dead.
On the trail, heading for Lac Bain, Bush McTaggart heard that cry and
shivered.
It was the smell of smoke, thickening in the air until it stung his
nostrils, that drew Baree at last away from the chasm and back to the
cabin. There was not much left when he came to the clearing. Where the
cabin had been was a red-hot, smoldering mass. For a long time he sat
watching it, still waiting and still listening. He no longer felt the
effect of the bullet that had stunned him, but his senses were
undergoing another change now, as strange and unreal as their struggle
against that darkness of near death in the cabin. In a space that had
not covered more than an hour the world had twisted itself grotesquely
for Baree. That long ago the Willow was sitting before her little
mirror in the cabin, talking to him and laughing in her happiness,
while he lay in vast contentment on the floor. And now there was no
cabin, no Nepeese, no Pierrot. Quietly he struggled to comprehend. It
was some time before he moved from under the thick balsams, for already
a deep and growing suspicion began to guide his movements. He did not
go nearer to the smoldering mass of the cabin, but slinking low, made
his way about the circle of the clearing to the dog corral. This took
him under the tall spruce. For a full minute he paused here, sniffing
at the freshly made mound under its white mantle of snow. When he went
on, he slunk still lower, and his ears were flat against his head.
The dog corral was open and empty. McTaggart had seen to that. Again
Baree squatted back on his haunches and sent forth the death howl. This
time it was for Pierrot. In it there was a different note from that of
the howl he had sent forth from the chasm: it was positive, certain. In
the chasm his cry had been tempered with doubt--a questioning hope,
something that was so almost human that McTaggart had shivered on the
trail. But Baree knew what lay in that freshly dug snow-covered grave.
A scant three feet of earth could not hide its secret from him. There
was death--definite and unequivocal. But for Nepeese he was still
hoping and seeking.
Until noon he did not go far from the site of the cabin, but only once
did he actually approach and sniff about the black pile of steaming
timbers. Again and again he circled the edge of the clearing, keeping
just within the bush and timber, sniffing the air and listening. Twice
he went hack to the chasm. Late in the afternoon there came to him a
sudden impulse that carried him swiftly through the forest. He did not
run openly now. Caution, suspicion, and fear had roused in him afresh
the instincts of the wolf. With his ears flattened against the side of
his head, his tail drooping until the tip of it dragged the snow and
his back sagging in the curious, evasive gait of the wolf, he scarcely
made himself distinguishable from the shadows of the spruce and balsams.
There was no faltering in the trail Baree made; it was straight as a
rope might have been drawn through the forest, and it brought him,
early in the dusk, to the open spot where Nepeese had fled with him
that day she had pushed McTaggart over the edge of the precipice into
the pool. In the place of the balsam shelter of that day there was now
a watertight birchbark tepee which Pierrot had helped the Willow to
make during the summer. Baree went straight to it and thrust in his
head with a low and expectant whine.
There was no answer. It was dark and cold in the tepee. He could make
out indistinctly the two blankets that were always in it, the row of
big tin boxes in which Nepeese kept their stores, and the stove which
Pierrot had improvised out of scraps of iron and heavy tin. But Nepeese
was not there. And there was no sign of her outside. The snow was
unbroken except by his own trail. It was dark when he returned to the
burned cabin. All that night he hung about the deserted dog corral, and
all through the night the snow fell steadily, so that by dawn he sank
into it to his shoulders when he moved out into the clearing.
But with day the sky had cleared. The sun came up, and the world was
almost too dazzling for the eyes. It warmed Baree's blood with new hope
and expectation. His brain struggled even more eagerly than yesterday
to comprehend. Surely the Willow would be returning soon! He would hear
her voice. She would appear suddenly out of the forest. He would
receive some signal from her. One of these things, or all of them, must
happen. He stopped sharply in his tracks at every sound, and sniffed
the air from every point of the wind. He was traveling ceaselessly. His
body made deep trails in the snow around and over the huge white mound
where the cabin had stood. His tracks led from the corral to the tall
spruce, and they were as numerous as the footprints of a wolf pack for
half a mile up and down the chasm.
On the afternoon of this day the second strong impulse came to him. It
was not reason, and neither was it instinct alone. It was the struggle
halfway between, the brute mind righting at its best with the mystery
of an intangible thing--something that could not be seen by the eye or
heard by the ear. Nepeese was not in the cabin, because there was no
cabin. She was not at the tepee. He could find no trace of her in the
chasm. She was not with Pierrot under the big spruce.
Therefore, unreasoning but sure, he began to follow the old trap line
into the north and west.