Baree, Son of Kazan

by James Oliver Curwood

In Pierrot's face Nepeese saw what had happened. Her heart died in her breast as she looked upon the swift and terrible change wrought by sudden death. Slowly Pierrot straightened. His eyes were wide for a moment—wide and staring. He made no sound. She could not see his lips move. And then he fell toward her, so that McTaggart's body was free. Blindly and with an agony that gave no evidence in cry or word she flung herself down beside her father. He was dead.

How long Nepeese lay there, how long she waited for Pierrot to move, to open his eyes, to breathe, she would never know. In that time McTaggart rose to his feet and stood leaning against the wall, the pistol in his hand, his brain clearing itself as he saw his final triumph. His work did not frighten him. Even in that tragic moment as he stood against the wall, his defense—if it ever came to a defense—framed itself in his mind. Pierrot had murderously assaulted him—without cause. In self-defense he had killed him. Was he not the Factor of Lac Bain? Would not the company and the law believe his word before that of this girl? His brain leaped with the old exultation. It would never come to that—to a betrayal of this struggle and death in the cabin—after he had finished with her! She would not be known for all time as La Bete Noir. No, they would bury Pierrot, and she would return to Lac Bain with him. If she had been helpless before, she was ten times more helpless now. She would never tell of what had happened in the cabin.

He forgot the presence of death as he looked at her, bowed over her father so that her hair covered him like a silken-shroud. He replaced the pistol in its holster and drew a deep breath into his lungs. He was still a little unsteady on his feet, but his face was again the face of a devil. He took a step, and it was then there came a sound to rouse the girl. In the shadow of the farther wall Baree had struggled to his haunches, and now he growled.

Slowly Nepeese lifted her head. A power which she could not resist drew her eyes up until she was looking into the face of Bush McTaggart. She had almost lost consciousness of his presence. Her senses were cold and deadened—it was as if her own heart had stopped beating along with Pierrot's. What she saw in the factor's face dragged her out of the numbness of her grief back into the shadow of her own peril. He was standing over her. In his face there was no pity, nothing of horror at what he had done—only an insane exultation as he looked—not at Pierrot's dead body, but at her. He put out a hand, and it rested on her head. She felt his thick fingers crumpling her hair, and his eyes blazed like embers of fire behind watery films. She struggled to rise, but with his hands at her hair he held her down.

"Great God!" she breathed.

She uttered no other words, no plea for mercy, no other sound but a dry, hopeless sob. In that moment neither of them heard or saw Baree. Twice in crossing the cabin his hindquarters had sagged to the floor. Now he was close to McTaggart. He wanted to give a single lunge to the man-brute's back and snap his thick neck as he would have broken a caribou bone. But he had no strength. He was still partially paralyzed from his foreshoulder back. But his jaws were like iron, and they closed savagely on McTaggart's leg.

With a yell of pain the factor released his hold on the Willow, and she staggered to her feet. For a precious half-minute she was free, and as the factor kicked and struck to loose Baree's hold, she ran to the cabin door and out into the day. The cold air struck her face. It filled her lungs with new strength; and without thought of where hope might lie she ran through the snow into the forest.

McTaggart appeared at the door just in time to see her disappear. His leg was torn where Baree had fastened his fangs, but he felt no pain as he ran in pursuit of the girl. She could not go far. An exultant cry, inhuman as the cry of a beast, came in a great breath from his gaping mouth as he saw that she was staggering weakly as she fled. He was halfway to the edge of the forest when Baree dragged himself over the threshold. His jaws were bleeding where McTaggart had kicked him again and again before his fangs gave way. Halfway between his ears was a seared spot, as if a red-hot poker had been laid there for an instant. This was where McTaggart's bullet had gone. A quarter of an inch deeper, and it would have meant death. As it was, it had been like the blow of a heavy club, paralyzing his senses and sending him limp and unconscious against the wall. He could move on his feet now without falling, and slowly he followed in the tracks of the man and the girl.

As she ran, Nepeese's mind became all at once clear and reasoning. She turned into the narrow trail over which McTaggart had followed her once before, but just before reaching the chasm, she swung sharply to the right. She could see McTaggart. He was not running fast, but was gaining steadily, as if enjoying the sight of her helplessness, as he had enjoyed it in another way on that other day. Two hundred yards below the deep pool into which she had pushed the factor—just beyond the shallows out of which he had dragged himself to safety—was the beginning of Blue Feather's Gorge. An appalling thing was shaping itself in her mind as she ran to it—a thing that with each gasping breath she drew became more and more a great and glorious hope. At last she reached it and looked down. And as she looked, there whispered up out of her soul and trembled on her lips the swan song of her mother's people.

Our fathers—come! Come from out of the valley. Guide us—for today we die, And the winds whisper of death!