“It is Baree!” she cried.

She took the bundle from McTaggart and turned to Pierrot.

“Tell him that Baree belongs to me,” she said.

She hurried into the cabin.  McTaggart looked after her, stunned and amazed.  Then he looked at Pierrot.  A man half blind could have seen that Pierrot was as amazed as he.

Nepeese had not spoken to him—­the factor of Lac Bain!  She had not looked at him!  And she had taken the dog from him with as little concern as though he had been a wooden man.  The red in his face deepened as he stared from Pierrot to the door through which she had gone, and which she had closed behind her.

On the floor of the cabin Nepeese dropped on her knees and finished unwrapping the blanket.  She was not afraid of Baree.  She had forgotten McTaggart.  And then, as Baree rolled in a limp heap on the floor, she saw his half-closed eyes and the dry blood on his jaws, and the light left her face as swiftly as the sun is shadowed by a cloud.  “Baree,” she cried softly.  “Baree—­Baree!”

She partly lifted him in her two hands.  Baree’s head sagged.  His body was numbed until he was powerless to move.  His legs were without feeling.  He could scarcely see.  But he heard her voice!  It was the same voice that had come to him that day he had felt the sting of the bullet, the voice that had pleaded with him under the rock!

The voice of the Willow thrilled Baree.  It seemed to stir the sluggish blood in his veins, and he opened his eyes wider and saw again the wonderful stars that had glowed at him so softly the day of Wakayoo’s death.  One of the Willow’s long braids fell over her shoulder, and he smelled again the sweet scent of her hair as her hand caressed him and her voice talked to him.  Then she got up suddenly and left him, and he did not move while he waited for her.  In a moment she was back with a basin of water and a cloth.  Gently she washed the blood from his eyes and mouth.  And still Baree made no move.  He scarcely breathed.  But Nepeese saw the little quivers that shot through his body when her hand touched him, like electric shocks.

“He beat you with a club,” she was saying, her dark eyes within a foot of Baree’s.  “He beat you!  That man-beast!”

There came an interruption.  The door opened, and the man-beast stood looking down on them, a grin on his red face.  Instantly Baree showed that he was alive.  He sprang back from under the Willow’s hand with a sudden snarl and faced McTaggart.  The hair of his spine stood up like a brush; his fangs gleamed menacingly, and his eyes burned like living coals.

“There is a devil in him,” said McTaggart.  “He is wild—­born of the wolf.  You must be careful or he will take off a hand, kit sakahet.”  It was the first time he had called her that lover’s name in Cree—­sweetheart!  Her heart pounded.  She bent her head for a moment over her clenched hands, and McTaggart—­looking down on what he thought was her confusion—­laid his hand caressingly on her hair.  From the door Pierrot had heard the word, and now he saw the caress, and he raised a hand as if to shut out the sight of a sacrilege.