The Collected Works of James Oliver Curwood (Illustrated Edition). James Oliver Curwood
the heart-thrilling call of the lonely graves back on the Gray Loon, of the burned cabin, the abandoned tepee beyond the pool—and of Nepeese. In his sleep he saw visions of things. He heard again the low, sweet voice of the Willow, felt the touch of her hand, was at play with her once more in the dark shades of the forest—and Carvel would sit and watch him as he dreamed, trying to read the meaning of what he saw and heard.
In April Carvel shouldered his furs up to the Hudson's Bay Company's post at Lac la Biche, which was still farther north. Baree accompanied him halfway, and then—at sundown Carvel returned to the cabin and found him there. He was so overjoyed that he caught the dog's head in his arms and hugged it. They lived in the cabin until May. The buds were swelling then, and the smell of growing things had begun to rise up out of the earth.
Then Carvel found the first of the early blue flowers.
That night he packed up.
"It's time to travel," he announced to Baree. "And I've sort of changed my mind. We're going back—there." And he pointed south.
CHAPTER XXX
A strange humor possessed Carvel as he began the southward journey. He did not believe in omens, good or bad.
Superstition had played a small part in his life, but he possessed both curiosity and a love for adventure, and his years of lonely wandering had developed in him a wonderfully clear mental vision of things, which in other words might be called a singularly active imagination. He knew that some irresistible force was drawing Baree back into the south—that it was pulling him not only along a given line of the compass, but to an exact point in that line.
For no reason in particular the situation began to interest him more and more, and as his time was valueless, and he had no fixed destination in view, he began to experiment. For the first two days he marked the dog's course by compass. It was due southeast. On the third morning Carvel purposely struck a course straight west. He noted quickly the change in Baree—his restlessness at first, and after that the dejected manner in which he followed at his heels. Toward noon Carvel swung sharply to the south and east again, and almost immediately Baree regained his old eagerness, and ran ahead of his master.
After this, for many days, Carvel followed the trail of the dog.
"Mebby I'm an idiot, old chap," he apologized one evening. "But it's a bit of fun, after all—an' I've got to hit the line of rail before I can get over to the mountains, so what's the difference? I'm game—so long as you don't take me back to that chap at Lac Bain. Now—what the devil! Are you hitting for his trap line, to get even? If that's the case—"
He blew out a cloud of smoke from his pipe as he eyed Baree, and Baree, with his head between his forepaws, eyed him back.
A week later Baree answered Carvel's question by swinging westward to give a wide berth to Post Lac Bain. It was midafternoon when they crossed the trail along which Bush McTaggart's traps and deadfalls had been set. Baree did not even pause. He headed due south, traveling so fast that at times he was lost to Carvel's sight. A suppressed but intense excitement possessed him, and he whined whenever Carvel stopped to rest—always with his nose sniffing the wind out of the south. Springtime, the flowers, the earth turning green, the singing of birds, and the sweet breaths in the air were bringing him back to that great yesterday when he had belonged to Nepeese. In his unreasoning mind there existed no longer a winter. The long months of cold and hunger were gone; in the new visionings that filled his brain they were forgotten. The birds and flowers and the blue skies had come back, and with them the Willow must surely have returned, and she was waiting for him now, just over there beyond that rim of green forest.
Something greater than mere curiosity began to take possession of Carvel. A whimsical humor became a fixed and deeper thought, an unreasoning anticipation that was accompanied by a certain thrill of subdued excitement. By the time they reached the old beaver pond the mystery of the strange adventure had a firm hold on him. From Beaver Tooth's colony Baree led him to the creek along which Wakayoo, the black bear, had fished, and thence straight to the Gray Loon.
It was early afternoon of a wonderful day. It was so still that the rippling waters of spring, singing in a thousand rills and streamlets, filled the forests with a droning music. In the warm sun the crimson bakneesh glowed like blood. In the open spaces the air was scented with the perfume of blue flowers. In the trees and bushes mated birds were building their nests. After the long sleep of winter nature was at work in all her glory. It was Unekepesim, the Mating Moon, the Home-building Moon—and Baree was going home. Not to matehood—but to Nepeese. He knew that she was there now, perhaps at the very edge of the chasm where he had seen her last. They would be playing together again soon, as they had played yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and in his joy he barked up into Carvel's face, and urged him to greater speed.
Then they came to the clearing, and once more Baree stood like a rock. Carvel saw the charred ruins of the burned cabin, and a moment later the two graves under the tall spruce. He began to understand as his eyes returned slowly to the waiting, listening dog. A great swelling rose in his throat, and after a moment or two he said softly, and with an effort,
"Boy, I guess you're home."
Baree did not hear. With his head up and his nose tilted to the blue sky he was sniffing the air. What was it that came to him with the perfumes of the forests and the green meadow? Why was it that he trembled now as he stood there? What was there in the air? Carvel asked himself, and his questing eyes tried to answer the questions. Nothing. There was death here—death and desertion, that was all. And then, all at once, there came from Baree a strange cry—almost a human cry—and he was gone like the wind.
Carvel had thrown off his pack. He dropped his rifle beside it now, and followed Baree. He ran swiftly, straight across the open, into the dwarf balsams, and into a grass-grown path that had once been worn by the travel of feet. He ran until he was panting for breath, and then stopped, and listened. He could hear nothing of Baree. But that old worn trail led on under the forest trees, and he followed it.
Close to the deep, dark pool in which he and the Willow had disported so often Baree, too, had stopped. He could hear the rippling of water, and his eyes shone with a gleaming fire as he searched for Nepeese. He expected to see her there, her slim white body shimmering in some dark shadow of overhanging spruce, or gleaming suddenly white as snow in one of the warm plashes of sunlight. His eyes sought out their old hiding places; the great split rock on the other side, the shelving banks under which they used to dive like otter, the spruce boughs that dipped down to the surface, and in the midst of which the Willow loved to pretend to hide while he searched the pool for her. And at last the realization was borne upon him that she was not there, that he had still farther to go.
He went on to the tepee. The little open space in which they had built their hidden wigwam was flooded with sunshine that came through a break in the forest to the west. The tepee was still there. It did not seem very much changed to Baree. And rising from the ground in front of the tepee was what had come to him faintly on the still air—the smoke of a small fire. Over that fire was bending a person, and it did not strike Baree as amazing, or at all unexpected, that this person should have two great shining braids down her back. He whined, and at his whine the person grew a little rigid, and turned slowly.
Even then it seemed quite the most natural thing in the world that it should be Nepeese, and none other. He had lost her yesterday. Today he had found her. And in answer to his whine there came a sobbing cry straight out of the heart of the Willow.
Carvel found them there a few minutes later, the dog's head hugged close up against the Willow's breast, and the Willow was crying—crying like a little child, her face hidden from him on Baree's neck. He did not interrupt them, but waited; and as he waited something in the sobbing voice and the stillness of the forest seemed to whisper to him a bit of the story of the burned cabin and the two graves, and the meaning of the Call that had come to Baree from out of the south.
CHAPTER XXXI