That night there was a new campfire in the clearing. 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 smoldering 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 work 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 warmly reflecting its mellow light. 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 alight 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.
"Tomorrow 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,
"Tomorrow 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 tomorrow," Nepeese answered him.
"Tomorrow, as the sun goes down, he will enter the clearing. I know. My
blood has been singing it all day. Tomorrow--tomorrow--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. Tomorrow--he will come tomorrow! The Willow, exultant, had said
that. But to old Tuboa the trees might have whispered, WHY NOT TONIGHT?
It was midnight when the big moon stood full above the little opening
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 traveled
far and fast that day, and they heard no sound.
But they had traveled 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 rich 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 smoldered 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. Tonight I will bury him and burn the
tepee. Tomorrow 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?"
"OM'--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.
End of Project Gutenberg's Baree, Son of Kazan, by James Oliver Curwood