Perhaps rather tediously I have come to the few words I want to say about Baree, the hero of this book.  Baree, after all, is only another Kazan.  For it was Kazan I found in the way I have described—­a bad dog, a killer about to be shot to death by his master when chance, and my own faith in him, gave him to me.

We traveled together for many thousands of miles through the northland—­on trails to the Barren Lands, to Hudson’s Bay and to the Arctic.  Kazan—­the bad dog, the half-wolf, the killer—­was the best four-legged friend I ever had.  He died near Fort MacPherson, on the Peel River, and is buried there.  And Kazan was the father of Baree; Gray Wolf, the full-blooded wolf, was his mother.  Nepeese, the Willow, still lives near God’s Lake; and it was in the country of Nepeese and her father that for three lazy months I watched the doings at Beaver Town, and went on fishing trips with Wakayoo, the bear.  Sometimes I have wondered if old Beaver Tooth himself did not in some way understand that I had made his colony safe for his people.  It was Pierrot’s trapping ground; and to Pierrot—­father of Nepeese—­I gave my best rifle on his word that he would not harm my beaver friends for two years.  And the people of Pierrot’s breed keep their word.  Wakayoo, Baree’s big bear friend, is dead.  He was killed as I have described, in that “pocket” among the ridges, while I was on a jaunt to Beaver Town.  We were becoming good friends and I missed him a great deal.  The story of Pierrot and of his princess wife, Wyola, is true; they are buried side by side under the tall spruce that stood near their cabin.  Pierrot’s murderer, instead of dying as I have told it, was killed in his attempt to escape the Royal Mounted farther west.  When I last saw Baree he was at Lac Seul House, where I was the guest of Mr. William Patterson, the factor; and the last word I heard from him was through my good friend Frank Aldous, factor at White Dog Post, who wrote me only a few weeks ago that he had recently seen Nepeese and Baree and the husband of Nepeese, and that the happiness he found in their far wilderness home made him regret that he was a bachelor.  I feel sorry for Aldous.  He is a splendid young Englishman, unattached, and some day I am going to try and marry him off.  I have in mind someone at the present moment—­a fox-trapper’s daughter up near the Barren, very pretty, and educated at a missioner’s school; and as Aldous is going with me on my next trip I may have something to say about them in the book that is to follow “Baree, Son of Kazan.”

James Oliver Curwood

Owosso, Michigan

CHAPTER 1

To Baree, for many days after he was born, the world was a vast gloomy cavern.