In their big mud-and-stick strongholds the beavers held a council of war. They were distinctly puzzled. There were four enemies which they dreaded above all others: the otter, who destroyed their dams in the wintertime and brought death to them from cold and by lowering the water so they could not get to their food supplies; the lynx, who preyed on them all, young and old alike; and the fox and wolf, who would lie in ambush for hours in order to pounce on the very young, like Umisk and his playmates. If Baree had been any one of these four, wily Beaver Tooth and his people would have known what to do. But Baree was surely not an otter, and if he was a fox or a wolf or a lynx, his actions were very strange, to say the least. Half a dozen times he had had the opportunity to pounce on his prey, if he had been seeking prey.
But at no time had he shown the least desire to harm them.
It may be that the beavers discussed the matter fully among themselves.
It is possible that Umisk and his playmates told their parents of their adventure, and of how Baree had made no move to harm them when he could quite easily have caught them. It is also more than likely that the older beavers who had fled from Baree that morning gave an account of their adventures, again emphasizing the fact that the stranger, while frightening them, had shown no disposition to attack them. All this is quite possible, for if beavers can make a large part of a continent"s history, and can perform engineering feats that nothing less than dynamite can destroy, it is only reasonable to suppose that they have some way of making one another understand.
However this may be, courageous old Beaver Tooth took it upon himself to end the suspense.
It was early in the afternoon that for the third or fourth time Baree walked out on the dam. This dam was fully two hundred feet in length, but at no point did the water run over it, the overflow finding its way through narrow sluices. A week or two ago Baree could have crossed to the opposite side of the pond on this dam, but now--at the far end--Beaver Tooth and his engineers were adding a new section of dam, and in order to accomplish their work more easily, they had flooded fully fifty yards of the low ground on which they were working.
The main dam held a strange fascination for Baree. It was strong with the smell of beaver. The top of it was high and dry, and there were dozens of smoothly worn little hollows in which the beavers had taken their sun baths. In one of these hollows Baree stretched himself out, with his eyes on the pond. Not a ripple stirred its velvety smoothness.
Not a sound broke the drowsy stillness of the afternoon. The beavers might have been dead or asleep, for all the stir they made. And yet they knew that Baree was on the dam. Where he lay, the sun fell in a warm flood, and it was so comfortable that after a time he had difficulty in keeping his eyes open to watch the pond. Then he fell asleep.
Just how Beaver Tooth sensed this fact is a mystery. Five minutes later he came up quietly, without a splash or a sound, within fifty yards of Baree. For a few moments he scarcely moved in the water. Then he swam very slowly parallel with the dam across the pond. At the other side he drew himself ash.o.r.e, and for another minute sat as motionless as a stone, with his eyes on that part of the dam where Baree was lying. Not another beaver was moving, and it was very soon apparent that Beaver Tooth had but one object in mind--getting a closer observation of Baree. When he entered the water again, he swam along close to the dam.
Ten feet beyond Baree he began to climb out. He did this with great slowness and caution. At last he reached the top of the dam.
A few yards away Baree was almost hidden in his hollow, only the top of his shiny black body appearing to Beaver Tooth"s scrutiny. To get a better look, the old beaver spread his flat tail out beyond him and rose to a sitting posture on his hindquarters, his two front paws held squirrel-like over his breast. In this pose he was fully three feet tall. He probably weighed forty pounds, and in some ways he resembled one of those fat, good-natured, silly-looking dogs that go largely to stomach. But his brain was working with amazing celerity. Suddenly he gave the hard mud of the dam a single slap with his tail--and Baree sat up. Instantly he saw Beaver Tooth, and stared. Beaver Tooth stared. For a full half-minute neither moved the thousandth part of an inch. Then Baree stood up and wagged his tail.
That was enough. Dropping to his forefeet. Beaver Tooth waddled leisurely to the edge of the dam and dived over. He was neither cautious nor in very great haste now. He made a great commotion in the water and swam boldly back and forth under Baree. When he had done this several times, he cut straight up the pond to the largest of the three houses and disappeared. Five minutes after Beaver Tooth"s exploit word was pa.s.sing quickly among the colony. The stranger--Baree--was not a lynx. He was not a fox. He was not a wolf. Moreover, he was very young--and harmless. Work could be resumed. Play could be resumed.
There was no danger. Such was Beaver Tooth"s verdict.
If someone had shouted these facts in beaver language through a megaphone, the response could not have been quicker. All at once it seemed to Baree, who was still standing on the edge of the dam, that the pond was alive with beavers. He had never seen so many at one time before. They were popping up everywhere, and some of them swam up within a dozen feet of him and looked him over in a leisurely and curious way. For perhaps five minutes the beavers seemed to have no particular object in view. Then Beaver Tooth himself struck straight for the sh.o.r.e and climbed out. Others followed him. Half a dozen workers disappeared in the ca.n.a.ls. As many more waddled out among the alders and willows. Eagerly Baree watched for Umisk and his chums. At last he saw them, swimming forth from one of the smaller houses. They climbed out on their playground--the smooth bar above the sh.o.r.e of mud.
Baree wagged his tail so hard that his whole body shook, and hurried along the dam.
When he came out on the level strip of sh.o.r.e, Umisk was there alone, nibbling his supper from a long, freshly cut willow. The other little beavers had gone into a thick clump of young alders.
This time Umisk did not run. He looked up from his stick. Baree squatted himself, wiggling in a most friendly and ingratiating manner.
For a few seconds Umisk regarded him.
Then, very coolly, he resumed his supper.
CHAPTER 10
Just as in the life of every man there is one big, controlling influence, either for good or bad, so in the life of Baree the beaver pond was largely an arbiter of destiny. Where he might have gone if he had not discovered it, and what might have happened to him, are matters of conjecture. But it held him. It began to take the place of the old windfall, and in the beavers themselves he found a companionship which made up, in a way, for his loss of the protection and friendship of Kazan and Gray Wolf.
This companionship, if it could be called that, went just so far and no farther. With each day that pa.s.sed the older beavers became more accustomed to seeing Baree. At the end of two weeks, if Baree had gone away, they would have missed him--but not in the same way that Baree would have missed the beavers. It was a matter of good-natured toleration on their part. With Baree it was different. He was still uskahis, as Nepeese would have said. He still wanted mothering; he was still moved by the puppyish yearnings which he had not yet had the time to outgrow; and when night came--to speak that yearning quite plainly--he had the desire to go into the big beaver house with Umisk and his chums and sleep.
During this fortnight that followed Beaver Tooth"s exploit on the dam Baree ate his meals a mile up the creek, where there were plenty of crayfish. But the pond was home. Night always found him there, and a large part of his day. He slept at the end of the dam, or on top of it on particularly clear nights, and the beavers accepted him as a permanent guest. They worked in his presence as if he did not exist.
Baree was fascinated by this work, and he never grew tired of watching it. It puzzled and bewildered him. Day after day he saw them float timber and brush through the water for the new dam. He saw this dam growing steadily under their efforts. One day he lay within a dozen feet of an old beaver who was cutting down a tree six inches through.
When the tree fell, and the old beaver scurried away, Baree scurried, too. Then he came back and smelled of the cutting, wondering what it was all about, and why Umisk"s uncle or grandfather or aunt had gone to all that trouble.
He still could not induce Umisk and the other young beavers to join him in play, and after the first week or so he gave up his efforts. In fact, their play puzzled him almost as much as the dam-building operations of the older beavers. Umisk, for instance, was fond of playing in the mud at the edge of the pond. He was like a very small boy. Where his elders floated timbers from three inches to a foot in diameter to the big dam, Umisk brought small sticks and twigs no larger around than a lead pencil to his playground, and built a make-believe dam of his own.
Umisk would work an hour at a time on this play dam as industriously as his father and mother were working on the big dam, and Baree would lie flat on his belly a few feet away, watching him and wondering mightily.
And through this half-dry mud Umisk would also dig his miniature ca.n.a.ls, just as a small boy might have dug his Mississippi River and pirate-infested oceans in the outflow of some back-lot spring. With his sharp little teeth he cut down his big timber--willow sprouts never more than an inch in diameter; and when one of these four or five-foot sprouts toppled down, he undoubtedly felt as great a satisfaction as Beaver Tooth felt when he sent a seventy-foot birch crashing into the edge of the pond. Baree could not understand the fun of all this. He could see some reason for nibbling at sticks--he liked to sharpen his teeth on sticks himself; but it puzzled him to explain why Umisk so painstakingly stripped the bark from the sticks and swallowed it.
Another method of play still further discouraged Baree"s advances. A short distance from the spot where he had first seen Umisk there was a shelving bank that rose ten or twelve feet from the water, and this bank was used by the young beavers as a slide. It was worn smooth and hard. Umisk would climb up the bank at a point where it was not so steep. At the top of the slide he would put his tail out flat behind him and give himself a shove, shooting down the toboggan and landing in the water with a big splash. At times there were from six to ten young beavers engaged in this sport, and now and then one of the older beavers would waddle to the top of the slide and take a turn with the youngsters.
One afternoon, when the toboggan was particularly wet and slippery from recent use, Baree went up the beaver path to the top of the bank, and began investigating. Nowhere had he found the beaver smell so strong as on the slide. He began sniffing and incautiously went too far. In an instant his feet shot out from under him, and with a single wild yelp he went shooting down the toboggan. For the second time in his life he found himself struggling under water, and when a minute or two later he dragged himself up through the soft mud to the firmer footing of the sh.o.r.e, he had at last a very well-defined opinion of beaver play.
It may be that Umisk saw him. It may be that very soon the story of his adventure was known by all the inhabitants of Beaver Town. For when Baree came upon Umisk eating his supper of alder bark that evening, Umisk stood his ground to the last inch, and for the first time they smelled noses. At least Baree sniffed audibly, and plucky little Umisk sat like a rolled-up sphinx. That was the final cementing of their friendship--on Baree"s part. He capered about extravagantly for a few moments, telling Umisk how much he liked him, and that they"d be great chums. Umisk didn"t talk. He didn"t make a move until he resumed his supper. But he was a companionable-looking little fellow, for all that, and Baree was happier than he had been since the day he left the old windfall.
This friendship, even though it outwardly appeared to be quite one-sided, was decidedly fortunate for Umisk. When Baree was at the pond, he always kept as near to Umisk as possible, when he could find him. One day he was lying in a patch of gra.s.s, half asleep, while Umisk busied himself in a clump of alder shoots a few yards away. It was the warning crack of a beaver tail that fully roused Baree; and then another and another, like pistol shots. He jumped up. Everywhere beavers were scurrying for the pond.
Just then Umisk came out of the alders and hurried as fast as his short, fat legs would carry him toward the water. He had almost reached the mud when a lightning flash of red pa.s.sed before Baree"s eyes in the afternoon sun, and in another instant Napakasew--the he-fox--had fastened his sharp fangs in Umisk"s throat. Baree heard his little friend"s agonized cry; he heard the frenzied flap-flap-flap of many tails--and his blood pounded suddenly with the thrill of excitement and rage.
As swiftly as the red fox himself, Baree darted to the rescue. He was as big and as heavy as the fox, and when he struck Napakasew, it was with a ferocious snarl that Pierrot might have heard on the farther side of the pond, and his teeth sank like knives into the shoulder of Umisk"s a.s.sailant. The fox was of a breed of forest highwaymen which kills from behind. He was not a fighter when it came fang-to-fang, unless cornered--and so fierce and sudden was Baree"s a.s.sault that Napakasew took to flight almost as quickly as he had begun his attack on Umisk.
Baree did not follow him, but went to Umisk, who lay half in the mud, whimpering and snuffling in a curious sort of way. Gently Baree nosed him, and after a moment or two Umisk got up on his webbed feet, while fully twenty or thirty beavers were making a tremendous fuss in the water near the sh.o.r.e.
After this the beaver pond seemed more than ever like home to Baree.
CHAPTER 11
While lovely Nepeese was still shuddering over her thrilling experience under the rock--while Pierrot still offered grateful thanks in his prayers for her deliverance and Baree was becoming more and more a fixture at the beaver pond--Bush McTaggart was perfecting a little scheme of his own up at Post Lac Bain, about forty miles north and west. McTaggart had been factor at Lac Bain for seven years. In the company"s books down in Winnipeg he was counted a remarkably successful man. The expense of his post was below the average, and his semiannual report of furs always ranked among the first. After his name, kept on file in the main office, was one notation which said: "Gets more out of a dollar than any other man north of G.o.d"s Lake."
The Indians knew why this was so. They called him Napao Wetikoo--the man-devil. This was under their breath--a name whispered sinisterly in the glow of tepee fires, or spoken softly where not even the winds might carry it to the ears of Bush McTaggart. They feared him; they hated him. They died of starvation and sickness, and the tighter Bush McTaggart clenched the fingers of his iron rule, the more meekly, it seemed to him, did they respond to his mastery. His was a small soul, hidden in the hulk of a brute, which rejoiced in power. And here--with the raw wilderness on four sides of him--his power knew no end. The big company was behind him. It had made him king of a domain in which there was little law except his own. And in return he gave back to the company bales and bundles of furs beyond their expectation. It was not for them to have suspicions. They were a thousand or more miles away--and dollars were what counted.
Gregson might have told. Gregson was the investigating agent of that district, who visited McTaggart once each year. He might have reported that the Indians called McTaggart Napao Wetikoo because he gave them only half price for their furs. He might have told the company quite plainly that he kept the people of the trap lines at the edge of starvation through every month of the winter, that he had them on their knees with his hands at their throats--putting the truth in a mild and pretty way--and that he always had a woman or a girl, Indian or half-breed, living with him at the Post. But Gregson enjoyed his visits too much at Lac Bain. Always he could count on two weeks of coa.r.s.e pleasures. And in addition to that, his own womenfolk at home wore a rich treasure of fur that came to them from McTaggart.
One evening, a week after the adventure of Nepeese and Baree under the rock, McTaggart sat under the glow of an oil lamp in his "store." He had sent his little pippin-faced English clerk to bed, and he was alone. For six weeks there had been in him a great unrest. It was just six weeks ago that Pierrot had brought Nepeese on her first visit to Lac Bain since McTaggart had been factor there. She had taken his breath away. Since then he had been able to think of nothing but her.
Twice in that six weeks he had gone down to Pierrot"s cabin. Tomorrow he was going again. Marie, the slim Cree girl over in his cabin, he had forgotten--just as a dozen others before Marie had slipped out of his memory. It was Nepeese now. He had never seen anything quite so beautiful as Pierrot"s girl.
Audibly he cursed Pierrot as he looked at a sheet of paper under his hand, on which for an hour or more he had been making notes out of worn and dusty company ledgers. It was Pierrot who stood in his way.
Pierrot"s father, according to those notes, had been a full-blooded Frenchman. Therefore Pierrot was half French, and Nepeese was quarter French--though she was so beautiful he could have sworn there was not more than a drop or two of Indian blood in her veins. If they had been all Indian--Chipewyan, Cree, Ojibway, Dog Rib--anything--there would have been no trouble at all in the matter. He would have bent them to his power, and Nepeese would have come to his cabin, as Marie had come six months ago. But there was the accursed French of it! Pierrot and Nepeese were different. And yet--
He smiled grimly, and his hands clenched tighter. After all, was not his power sufficient? Would even Pierrot dare stand up against that? If Pierrot objected, he would drive him from the country--from the trapping regions that had come down to him as heritage from father and grandfather, and even before their day. He would make of Pierrot a wanderer and an outcast, as he had made wanderers and outcasts of a score of others who had lost his favor. No other Post would sell to or buy from Pierrot if Le Bete--the black cross--was put after his name.
That was his power--a law of the factors that had come down through the centuries. It was a tremendous power for evil. It had brought him Marie, the slim, dark-eyed Cree girl, who hated him--and who in spite of her hatred "kept house for him."
That was the polite way of explaining her presence if explanations were ever necessary. McTaggart looked again at the notes he had made on the sheet of paper. Pierrot"s trapping country, his own property according to the common law of the wilderness, was very valuable. During the last seven years he had received an average of a thousand dollars a year for his furs, for McTaggart had been unable to cheat Pierrot quite as completely as he had cheated the Indians. A thousand dollars a year!
Pierrot would think twice before he gave that up. McTaggart chuckled as he crumpled the paper in his hand and prepared to put out the light.
Under his close-cropped beard his reddish face blazed with the fire that was in his blood. It was an unpleasant face--like iron, merciless, filled with the look that gave him his name of Napao Wetikoo. His eyes gleamed, and he drew a quick breath as he put out the light.
He chuckled again as he made his way through the darkness to the door.
Nepeese as good as belonged to him. He, would have her if it cost--PIERROT"S LIFE. And--WHY NOT? It was all so easy. A shot on a lonely trap line, a single knife thrust--and who would know? Who would guess where Pierrot had gone? And it would all be Pierrot"s fault. For the last time he had seen Pierrot, he had made an honest proposition: he would marry Nepeese. Yes, even that. He had told Pierrot so. He had told Pierrot that when the latter was his father-in-law, he would pay him double price for furs.
And Pierrot had stared--had stared with that strange, stunned look in his face, like a man dazed by a blow from a club. And so if he did not get Nepeese without trouble it would all be Pierrot"s fault. Tomorrow McTaggart would start again for the half-breed"s country. And the next day Pierrot would have an answer for him. Bush McTaggart chuckled again as he went to bed.
Until the next to the last day Pierrot said nothing to Nepeese about what had pa.s.sed between him and the factor at Lac Bain. Then he told her.
"He is a beast--a man-devil," he said, when he had finished. "I would rather see you out there--with her--dead." And he pointed to the tall spruce under which the princess mother lay.
Nepeese had not uttered a sound. But her eyes had grown bigger and darker, and there was a flush in her cheeks which Pierrot had never seen there before. She stood up when he had finished, and she seemed taller to him. Never had she looked quite so much like a woman, and Pierrot"s eyes were deep-shadowed with fear and uneasiness as he watched her while she gazed off into the northwest--toward Lac Bain.
She was wonderful, this slip of a girl-woman. Her beauty troubled him.