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Show I BARBB, Son of Kazan By JAMES OLIVER CUR WOOD f tpvti flarvlpa Chapter XII Continued 20 He mumbled that fact over and over Bgnln, stupidlj', thickly, as though his brain could grasp nothing beyond it. ?be was dead. And Pierrot was dead. And he, In a few minutes, had accomplished accom-plished it all. He turned back toward the cabin-not cabin-not by the trail .over which he had pursued Nepeese, but straight through the thick bush. Great flakes of snow had begun to fall. He looked at the tky, where banks of dark clouds were rolling up from the south and east. The sun went out. Soon there would be a storm a heavy snowstorm. The big flakes falling on his naked hands and face set his mind to work. It was lucky for him, tills storm. It would cover everything the fresh trails,, even the grave he would dig for Pierrot Pier-rot It does not take such a man as the Factor long to recover from a moral concussion. By the time he came in sight of the cabin his mind was again at work on physical things on the necessities of the situation. The appalling ap-palling thing, after all, was not that both Pierrot and Nepeese were dead, but that his dream was shattered. It was not that Nepeese was dead, but that he had lost her. This was his vital disappointment. The other thing his crime It was easy to cover. It was not sentiment that made him dig Pierrot's grave close to the princess prin-cess mother's under the tall spruce. It was not sentiment that made him dig the grave at all, but caution. He buried Pierrot decently. Then he poured Pierrot's stock of kerosene where It would be most effective and touched a match to It. - He. stood in the edge of the forest unlil the cabin was a mass of flames. The snow was falling thickly. The freshly made grave was a white mound, and the trails were filling. For the physical things he had done there was no fear In Bush McTaggart's heart as he turned back toward Lac Bain. Xo one would ever look into the grave of Pierrot du Quesne. And there was no one to betray him if such a miracle happened. But of one thing his black soul would never be able to free Itself. It-self. Always he would see the pale, triumphant face of the Willow as she 6tood facing hliu In that moment . of her glory when, even as she was choosing death rather than him, he had cried to himself: "Ah! Is she not wonderful !" As Bush MeTaggart had forgotten Earee, so Baree had forgotten the Factor from Lac Bain. When MeTaggart MeTag-gart had run along the edge of the chasm, Baree had squatted himself in the foot-beaten" plot of snow where Nepeese had last stood, his body stiffened stif-fened and his forefeet braced as he. looked down. He had seen her take the leap. Many times that summer lie had followed her in her daring dives into the deep, quiet water of the pool. But this was a tremendous distance. dis-tance. She had never dived Into a place like that. He could see the black heads of the rocks, appearing and disappearing in the whirling foam like the heads of monsters at play; the roar of the water wa-ter filled him with dread ; his eyes caught the swift rush of crumbled ice between the rock walls. And she had gone down there 1 He had a great desire to follow her, to jump In, as he had always jumped In after her. She was surely down there, even though he could not see heir Probably she was playing among the rocks and hiding herself in the white froth and wondering why he didn't come. But he hesitated hesitated hesi-tated with his head and neck over the ss, nnd his forefeet giving way a little in the snow. With an effort he draped himself back and whined. He harked the short, sharp signal with 'l)lch he always called her. There s's no answer. Again and again he barked, and always there was nothing tot the roar of the water that came back to him. The snow was falling now, and Me-TnRWrt Me-TnRWrt had returned to the cahin. At, a little Baree followed In the lrall he had made along the edge of he chasm, and wherever MeTaggart had stopped to peer over, Baree Mused also. B'or a space his hatred " the man was burned up In his de-to de-to join the Willow, and he con-: con-: "lp1 alng th gorge until, a quar-ei quar-ei of a mile beyond whore the Fac-or Fac-or had last looked into It, he came ' the narrow trail down which he and "Peese had many times adventured " West of rock violets. The twisting M'h that led down the face of the I was filled with snow now, but 'fee cleared his way through it unit un-it last he stood at the edge of the !, cn torrent. Nepeese was not h Je' I!e wlline'l- and barked again, to h "me tllere was ln nls sif-'n!l' f an uneasy "repression, a whim-"e whim-"e note which told that he .lid not lh9, ' a rer'y. For five minutes after mow SlU n hls nauncnes ln the . stolid as a rock. What it was .. Mme down out of the dark mys-Va' mys-Va' ni tumult of the chasm to him. m hiP'r't"wt''spprs of n!mire tnnt rm,t 'he ,ruth- u Is i'evond the ki, "r r(-'llsni lo explain. But he 0I"' he looked; ar.d his mis cles twitched as the truth grew In him; and at last he raised his head slowly until his black muzzle pointed to the white storm in the sky, and out of his throat there went forth the quavering, long-drawn howl of the husky who mourns outside the tepee of a master who Is newly dead. On the trail, heading for Lac Bain, Bush MeTaggart heard that cry and shivered. It was the smell of smoke, thickening thicken-ing in the air until It stung his nostrils, nos-trils, that drew Baree at last away from the chasm and back to the cabin. There was not much left when he came to the clearing. Where the cabin had been was a red-hot, smoldering smolder-ing mass. For a long time he sat watching It, still waiting and still listening. He no longer felt the effect ef-fect of the bullet that had stunned him, but his senses were undergoing another change now, as strange and unreal as their struggle against that darkness of near-death in the cabin. In a space that had not covered more than an hour the world had twisted Itself grotesquely for Baree. That long ago the Willow was sitting before be-fore her little mirror in the cabin, talking to him and laughing in her happiness, while he lay In vast contentment con-tentment on the floor. And now there was no cabin, no Nepeese, no Pierrot. He did not go nearer to the smoldering smolder-ing mass of the cabin, but slinking low, made his way about the circle of the open to the dog-corral. This took him under the tall spruce. For a full minute he paused here, sniffing at the freshly made mound under Its white mantle of snow. When he went on, he slunk still lower, and his ears were flat against his head. The dog-corral was open and empty. MeTaggart had seen to that. Again Baree squatted back on his haunches and sent forth the death-howl. This time it was for Pierrot.. In It there was a different note from that of the She Was Not at the Tepee. howl he had sent forth from the chasm : It was positive, certain. In the chasm his cry had been tempered with doubt a questioning hope, something some-thing that was so almost human that MeTaggart had shivered on the trail. But Baree knew what lay ln that freshly dug snow-covered grave. A scant three feet of earth could not hide Its secret from him. There was death definite and unequivocal. But for Nepeese he was still Jioping and seeking. Until noon he did not go far from the cabin, but only once did he actually actu-ally approach and sniff about the black pile of steaming timbers. Again and a-ain he circled the edge of the clear-in- keeping just within the hush and timber smiling the air and listening. Twice he went hack to the chasm.' I ale in the afternoon there came to him a sudden impulse that carried him wiftlv through the forest. He did not run openly n iw ; caution, suspicion and fear had roused in him afresh the instincts of the wolf. With his ears flattened against the side of his head, his tail drooping until the tip of It dragged the snow and his back sagging""! sag-ging""! the curious, evasive gait of the wolf, he scarcely made himself distinguishable dis-tinguishable from the shadows of the spruce and balsams. There was no faltering in ;he trail Baree made; it was straight as a rone might have been drawn through the forest, and it brought him, early m the dusk, to the open spot where Nepeese had fled with him that day she had pushed MeTaggart over the edge of the precipice into the pool. In the place of the balsam shelter of that dav there was now a water-tight blrch-ha'rk blrch-ha'rk tepee which Pierrot had helped the Willow to make during the summer. sum-mer. Baree went straight to it and thrust in his heao". with a low and expectant whine. There was no answer. It was fla.k and cold In the tcpen. He could make out Indistinctly the two blankets th were always in It. he row of big tm boxes in which Nepeese kept their stores, and the stove which Pierrot had improvised out of scraps of iron ' and heavy tin. But Nepeese was not there. And there was no sign of her i outside. The snow was unbroken ex- j cept by his own trail. It was dark when he returned to the burned cabin; All that night he hung about the deserted de-serted dog-corral, and all through the night the snow fell steadily, so that by dawn lit, sank into it to his shoulders shoul-ders when he moved out into the clearing. With day the sky had cleared. The sun came up, and the world was almost al-most too dazzling for the, eyes. It warmed Baree's blood with new hope and expectation. His brain struggled even more eagerly than yesterday to comprehend. Surely the Willow would I be returning soon ! He would hear ! her voice. She would appear suddenly out of the forest. He would receive some signal from her. One of these things, or all of them, must happen. He stopped sharply ln his tracks at every sound, and sniffed the air from every point of the wind. He was traveling trav-eling ceaselessly. His body made deep trails In the snow around and over the huge white mound where the cabin had stood; his tracks led from the corral to the tall spruce, and they were as numerous as the footprints of a wolf-pack for half a mile up and down the chasm. On the afternoon of this day the second big impulse came to him. It was not reason, and neither was It Instinct In-stinct alone. It was the struggle halfway half-way between, the brute mind fighting at Its best with the mystery of an intangible in-tangible thing something that could not be seen by the eye or heard by the ear. Nepeese was not In the cabin, because there was no cabin. She was not ot the tepee. He could find no trace of her In the chasm. She was not with Pierrot under the big spruce. Therefore, unreasoning but sure, ho began to follow the old trap-line Into the north and west. No man has ever looked clearly Into the mystery of death as it Is impinged upon the senses of the northern dog. It comes to him, sometimes, with the wind ; most frequently it must come with the wind, and yet there are ten thousand masters in the northland who will swear that their dogs have given warning of death hours before It actually came ; nnd there are many of these thousands who know from experience' ex-perience' that their teams will stop a quarter of a. mile from a stranger cabin in which there is unburied dead. Yesterday Baree had smelled death, and he knew without process of reasoning rea-soning that the dead was Pierrot. How he knew this, and why he accepted the fact as inevitable, is one of the mysteries mys-teries which at times seems to give the direct challenge to those who concede con-cede nothing-more than instinct to the brute mind. He knew that Pierrot was dead without exactly knowing what death was. But of one thing he was sure : he would never see Pierrot again; he would never hear his voice again; he would never hear again the swish-swish-swish of his snowshoes in the trail ahead, and so on the trap-line trap-line he did not look for Pierrot. Pierrot Pier-rot was gone forever. But Baree had not yet associated death with Nepeese. He believed that Nepeese was alive, and he was now Just as sure that he would overtake her on the trap-line as he was positive yesterday that he would find her at the birch-bark tepee. Since yesterday morning's breakfast with the Willow, Baree had gone without with-out eating; to appease his hunger meant to hunt, and his mind was too filled with his quest of Nepeese for that. He would have gone hungry all that day, but In the third mile from the cabin he came to a trap in which there was a big snowshoe rabbit. The rabbit was still alive, and he killeci it and ate his fill. Until dark he did not miss a trap. In one of i them there was a lynx; in another a j lisher-cat; out on the white surface : of a lake he sniffed at a snowy mound under which lay the body of a red fox , killed by one of Pierrot's poison baits. Both the lynx and the fisher-cat were ; alive, and the steel chains of their ( traps clunked sharply as they prepared pre-pared to give I'.aree battle. But Baree was uninterested. He hurried on. his uneasiness growing as the day darkened dark-ened and he found no sign of the WU- ' low. : (TO BE CONTINUED.) ' |