Pierrot was busy over his bear—and she would not call him. She made an effort to move the stone which closed in the hollow under the big boulder, but it was wedged in tightly. Then she began digging with a stick. If Pierrot had been there, his sharp eyes would have discovered the significance of that stone, which was not larger than a water pail. Possibly for centuries it had lain there, its support keeping the huge rock from toppling down, just as an ounce weight may swing the balance of a wheel that weighs a ton.
Five minutes—and Nepeese could move the stone. She tugged at it. Inch by inch she dragged it out until at last it lay at her feet and the opening was ready for her body. She looked again toward Pierrot. He was still busy, and she laughed softly as she untied a big red-and-white Bay handkerchief from about her shoulders. With this she would secure Baree. She dropped on her hands and knees and then lowered herself flat on the ground and began crawling into the hollow under the boulder.
Baree had moved. With the back of his head flattened against the rock, he had heard something which Nepeese had not heard. He had felt a slow and growing pressure, and from this pressure he had dragged himself slowly—and the pressure still followed. The mass of rock was settling! Nepeese did not see or hear or understand. She was calling to him more and more pleadingly:
"Baree—Baree—Baree—"
Her head and shoulders and both arms were under the rock now. The glow of her eyes was very close to Baree. He whined. The thrill of a great and impending danger stirred in his blood. And then—
In that moment Nepeese felt the pressure of the rock on her shoulder, and into the eyes that had been glowing softly at Baree there shot a sudden wild look of horror. And then there came from her lips a cry that was not like any other sound Baree had ever heard in the wilderness—wild, piercing, filled with agonized fear. Pierrot did not hear that first cry. But he heard the second and the third—and then scream after scream as the Willow's tender body was slowly crushed under the settling mass. He ran toward it with the speed of the wind. The cries were now weaker—dying away. He saw Baree as he came out from under the rock and ran into the canyon, and in the same instant he saw a part of the Willow's dress and her moccasined feet. The rest of her was hidden under the deathtrap. Like a madman Pierrot began digging.
When a few moments later he drew Nepeese out from under the boulder she was white and deathly still. Her eyes were closed. His hand could not feel that she was living, and a great moan of anguish rose out of his soul. But he knew how to fight for a life. He tore open her dress and found that she was not crushed as he had feared. Then he ran for water. When he returned, the Willow's eyes were open and she was gasping for breath.
"The blessed saints be praised!" sobbed Pierrot, falling on his knees at her side. "Nepeese, ma Nepeese!"
She smiled at him, and Pierrot drew her up to him, forgetting the water he had run so hard to get.
Still later, when he got down on his knees and peered under the rock, his face turned white and he said:
"Mon Dieu, if it had not been for that little hollow in the earth, Nepeese—"
He shuddered, and said no more. But Nepeese, happy in her salvation, made a movement with her hand and said, smiling at him:
"I would have been like—THAT." And she held her thumb and forefinger close together.
"But where did Baree go, mon pere?" Nepeese cried.
CHAPTER IX
Impelled by the wild alarm of the Willow's terrible cries and the sight of Pierrot dashing madly toward him from the dead body of Wakayoo, Baree did not stop running until it seemed as though his lungs could not draw another breath. When he stopped, he was well out of the canyon and headed for the beaver pond. For almost a week Baree had not been near the pond. He had not forgotten Beaver Tooth and Umisk and the other little beavers, but Wakayoo and his daily catch of fresh fish had been too big a temptation for him. Now Wakayoo was gone. He sensed the fact that the big black bear would never fish again in the quiet pools and shimmering eddies, and that where for many days there had been peace and plenty, there was now great danger. And just as in another country he would have fled for safety to the old windfall, he now fled desperately for the beaver pond.
Exactly wherein lay Baree's fears it would be difficult to say—but surely it was not because of Nepeese. The Willow had chased him hard. She had flung herself upon him. He had felt the clutch of her hands and the smother of her soft hair, and yet of her he was not afraid! If he stopped now and then in his flight and looked back, it was to see if Nepeese was following. He would not have run hard from her—alone. Her eyes and voice and hands had set something stirring in him; he was filled with a greater yearning and a greater loneliness now. And that night he dreamed troubled dreams.
He found himself a bed under a spruce root not far from the beaver pond, and all through the night his sleep was filled with that restless dreaming—dreams of his mother, of Kazan, the old windfall, of Umlsk—and of Nepeese. Once, when he awoke, he thought the spruce root was Gray Wolf; and when he found that she was not there, Pierrot and the Willow could have told what his crying meant if they had heard it. Again and again he had visions of the thrilling happenings of that day. He saw the flight of Wakayoo over the little meadow—he saw him die again. He saw the glow of the Willow's eyes close to his own, heard her voice—so sweet and low that it seemed like strange music to him—and again he heard her terrible screams.
Baree was glad when the dawn came. He did not seek for food, but went down to the pond. There was little hope and anticipation in his manner now. He remembered that, as plainly as animal ways could talk, Umisk and his playmates had told him they wanted nothing to do with him. And yet the fact that they were there took away some of his loneliness. It was more than loneliness. The wolf in him was submerged. The dog was master. And in these passing moments, when the blood of the wild was almost dormant in him, he was depressed by the instinctive and growing feeling that he was not of that wild, but a fugitive in it, menaced on all sides by strange dangers.
Deep in the northern forests the beaver does not work and play in darkness only, but uses day even more than night, and many of Beaver Tooth's people were awake when Baree began disconsolately to investigate the shores of the pond. The little beavers were still with their mothers in the big houses that looked like great domes of sticks and mud out in the middle of the lake. There were three of these houses, one of them at least twenty feet in diameter. Baree had some difficulty in following his side of the pond. When he got back among the willows and alders and birch, dozens of little canals crossed and crisscrossed in his path. Some of these canals were a foot wide, and others three or four feet, and all were filled with water. No country in the world ever had a better system of traffic than this domain of the beavers, down which they brought their working materials and food into the main reservoir—the pond.
In one of the larger canals Baree surprised a big beaver towing a four-foot cutting of birch as thick through as a man's leg—half a dozen breakfasts and dinners and suppers in that one cargo. The four or five inner barks of the birch are what might be called the bread and butter and potatoes of the beaver menu, while the more highly prized barks of the willow and young alder take the place of meat and pie. Baree smelled curiously of the birch cutting after the old beaver had abandoned it in flight, and then went on. He did not try to conceal himself now, and at least half a dozen beavers had a good look at him before he came to the point where the pond narrowed down to the width of the stream, almost half a mile from the dam. Then he wandered back. All that morning he hovered about the pond, showing himself openly.
In their big mud-and-stick strongholds the beavers held a council of war. They were distinctly puzzled.
