Newspapers / The Chatham Record (Pittsboro, … / Aug. 19, 1926, edition 1 / Page 4
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Page Four BAREE| :: SOU Os i; Kazan ii ij i: i: ;: By JAMES OLIVER CDRWOOB ;; iHWMt'MWWMtHWi' ((g>. Doubleday, Pace St Co.} WNU Service “You poor devil!" ne repeateu. There was no fear in the way he put forth his hand. It was the con fidence of a great .eineeritv and a great compassion. It touched Baree’s head and patted it in a brotherly fashion, and then —slowly and with a hit more caution — it went to the trap fastened j to Barge’s forepaw. In his half-crazed j brain Baree was fighting to under- j stand things, and the truth came j finally when he felt the steel jaws of the trap open, and he drew forth his maimed foot. He did then what he had done to no other creature but Nepeese. Just once his hot tongue shot put and licked Carvel’s hand. The aasn laughed. With l»ts powerful hands he opened the other traps, and j Baree was free. For a few moments he lay without moving, his eyes fixed on the man* ' Carvel had seated himself on tlie 1 snow-covered end of a birch log and was filling his pipe. Baree watched him light it; he noted with new in terest the first purplish cloud of smoke that left Carvel’s mouth. The man i was not more than the length of two trap-eliains away—and he grinned at Baree. •* ‘‘Screw up your nerve, old chap,” he encouraged. ‘‘No hones broken. Just ! « little stiff. Mebby we’d better —get out.” He turned his face in the direction of Lac Bain. The suspicion was in his mind that McTaggart might turn back. Perhaps that same suspicion j was impressed upon Baree, for when ; Carvel looked at him again he was! on his feet, staggering a bit as he gained " bis equilibrium. In another moment the outlaw had swung the pack-sack from his shoulders and was opening it. He thrust in his hand and i drew out a chunk of raw, red meat. “Killed it this morning,” he ex plained to Baree. “Yearling bull, ten der as partridge—and that’s as fine a sweetbread as ever came out from un der a backbone. Try it!” He tossed the flesh to Baree. There was no equivocation in the manner of its acceptance. Earee was famished — The Meat Was Flung to Him by a Friend. -Be Euried His Teeth in It. and the meat was flung to ; him by a friend. He buried his teeth in it. His jaws crunched it. New fire leaped into his blood as he feasted,.but not for an instant diet- his reddened eyes leave the other’s face. Carvel replaced his pack. He rose to his feet, took up hi§ rifle, slipped on his snowshoes, and fronted the north. “Come on, Boy,” he said. “We’ve got to travel.” It was a matter-of-fact invitation, as though the two had been traveling companions for a long time. It was, perhaps, not only an invitation but partly a command. It puzzled Baree. For a full half minute lie stood mo tionless In his tracks gazing at Carvel as he strode into the north. A sud- ! den convulsive twitching shot through Baree; he swung his head toward Lac Bain; he looked again at Carvel, and a whine that was scarcely more than a breath came out of liis throat. The man was just about to disappear Into the thick spruce. He paused, and looked back. “Coming, Boy?” Even at that distance Baree coirid see him grinning affably; he saw the outstretched hand, and the voice stirred new sensations in him. It was cot like Pierrot’s voice. He had never loved Pierrot. Neither was it soft and sweet like the Willow’s. He had known only a few men, and all of them he had regarded with distrust. But this was a voice that disarmed him. It was lureful in its appeal. He wantea to. uuo.tc: 5® was .filled with a oesire, an at once, to -roirow close at the heels of this stranger. For the first time in his life a crav ing for the friendship of man pos j sessed Baree. He did not move until Jim Carvel entered the spruce. Then he followed. That night they were camped In a dense growth of cedars and balsams j ten miles north of Bush McTaggart’s * trap-line. For two hours it had snowed, and their trail was covered. It was still snowing, but not a flake of the white deluge sifted down through the thick canopy of boughs. Carvel had put up his small silk tent, and had built a fire; their supper was over, and Baree lay on his belly facing the outlaw, almost within reach of his hand. With liis back to a tree Carvel was smoking luxuriously. He bad thrown off his cap and his coat, and in the warm fireglow he looked almost boyishly young. But even in that glow his jaws lost none of their squareness, nor his eyes tlielr clear alertness. He rubbed his hatods together, and held them out toward the fire. Baree watched his movements and listened intently to every sound that escaped his lips. His eyes had in them now a dumb sort of worship, a look that warmed Carvel’s heart and did away | with the vast loneliness and emptiness iof the night. Baree had dragged him | self nearer to the man’s feet, and ! suddenly Carvel leaned over and I patted his head. “I'm a had one, old chap,” he chuckled. “You haven’t got It on me — not a hit. Want to know what hap pened?” He waited a moment, and Baree looked at him steadily. Then Carvel went on, as if speaking to a human, “i.er’s see —it "'•*« five i ■‘art j ago, five years this December, just before Chris!mas time. Had a dad. Fine old chap, my dad was. No moth i er—just the dad, an’ when you added • us up we made just One. Understand? And along came a white-striped skunk named Hardy and shot him one day because dad had worked against him ;in polities. Out an’ out murder. An* they didn't hang that skunk! No, sir, they didn’t hang him. He had too much money, an’ too many friends in politics, an’ they let Mm off with two years in the penitentiary. But he didn’t get there. No—s’elp me God, he didn’t get there!” Carver was twisting his hands un ! till his knuckles cracked. An exultant I smile lighted up his face, and his eyes flashed hack the firelight. Baree drew a deep breath —a mere coincidence; j hut it was a tense moment for all that, j “No, he didn’t get to the peniten- ] tiary,” went on Carvel, looking 1 straight at Baree again. “Yours truly knew what that meant, old chap. He’d have boon pardoned inside a year. An’ ! there was my dad, the biggest half of . me, in his grave. So I just went up to that white-striped skunk right there ! before the judge’s eyes, an’ the law- j vers’ eyes, an’ the eyes of all his dear , relatives an’ friends —and I killed him ! And I got away. Was out through a window before they woke up, hit for the bush country, and have been eat- j ing up the trails ever since. An’ I iruess God was with ine. Boy. For He did a queer thing to help me out sum mer before last, just when the Moun ties were after me hardest an’ it looked pretty black. Man was found 1 drowned down in the Reindeer coun try, right where they thought I was cornered; an’ the good Lord mode ; that man look so much like me that he was buried under my name. So I’m j officially dead, old chap. I don’t need i to he afraid any more so long as I ! don’t get too familiar with people for a year or so longer, and ’way down Inside me I’ve liked to believe God | fixed it up in that way to help me out iof a bad hole. What’s your opinion? I Eh?” \ He leaned for an answer. Baree had listened. Perhaps, in a way, he had understood. But it was another sound than Carvel’s voice that came to his ears now. With his head close to the ground he heard it quite distinctly. He whined, and the whine ended in a snarl so low that Carvel just caught the warning note in It. He straightened. He stood up then, and faced the south. Baree stood be side him, his legs tense and his spine bristling. After a moment Carvel said: "Relatives of yours, old chap. Wolves.” He went int« the tent for hla rifle and cartridges. Baree was on his feet, rigid as hewn rock, when Carvel came out of the tent and for a few moments Carvel stood in silence watching him closely. Would the dog respond to the call of the pack? Did he belong to them? Would he go—now? The wolves were drawing nearer. They were not cir cling as a caribou or a deer would have circled, but were traveling straight—dead straight for their camp. The significance of this fact was easily understood by Carvel. All that after noon Baree’s l'eet had left a blood smell in their trail, and the wolves had struck the trail in the deep for est, where the falling snow had not covered it. Carvel was not alarmed. More than once in his five years of wandering between the Arctic and the Height of Land he had played the game with the wolves. Once he had almost lost, but that out in the open Barren. Ton. ht h* had a fire, and in the event of his firewood run ning out he had trees he could climb, i His anxiety just now was centered in . Baree. So lie said, making his voice [ quite casual, ‘‘You aren’t going, are [ you, old chap?” ! If Baree heard him he gave no evi , dence of it. But Caryel, still watch- I !ng him closely, saw that the hair t along his spine had risen like a brush, | and then he heard —growing slowly in Bareevs tnroat—-a snarl of ferocious ( hatred. It was the sort of snarl that ' had held back the Factor from Lac Bain, and Carvel, opening the breech of his gun to see that all was right, chuckled happily. Baree may have I heard the chuckle. Perhaps It meant something to him, for he turned his head suddenly and with flattened ears looked at his companion. The wolves were silent now. Carvel I knew what that meant, and he, was tensely alert. In the stillness the click of the safety on his rifle sounded with | metallic sharpness For many minutes j they heard nothing but the crack of the fire. Suddenly Baree’s muscles ! seemed to snap. He sprang back, and faced the quarter behind Carvel, his ! head level with his shoulders, his inch i long fangs gleaming as he snarled into the black caverns of the forest beyond ! the rim of firelight. Carvel had ! turned like a shot. It was almost frightening —what he saw. A pair of ; eyes burning with greenish fire, and j then another pair, and after that so many of them that he could not have counted them. He gave a sudden gasp. They were like cat-eyes, only much larger. Some of them, catching ; the firelight fully, were red as coals, | others Hashed blue and green—living ! things without bodies. With a swift ! glance he took in the black circle of the forest. They were out there, too; they were on all sides of them, but where he had seen them first they were thickest. In these first few sec ; ends he had forgotten Baree, awed nl- J most to stupefaction by that monster j eyed cordon of death that hemmed | them in. There were fifty—perhaps a hundred wolves out there, afraid of nothing in all this savage world but fire. They had come up without the sound of a padded foot or a broken tw!g. If It had been later, and they had Ixen asleep, and the fire out He shuddered, and for a moment the thought got the better cf his j nerves. lie had not intended to shoot except from necessity, but all at once his rifle came to his shoulder and he sent a stream of fire out where the eyes were thickest. Baree knew what the shots meant, and filled with the mad desire to get at the throat of one of his enemies he dashoo in their direction. Carvel gave a startled yell as he went. He saw the flash of Baree’s body, saw it swallowed up in the gloom, and in that same instant heard the deadly clash of fangs and the impact of bodies. A wild thrill Shot through him. The dog had charged I alone—and the wolves had waited, j There could he hut one end. His four i footed comrade had gone straight into the jaws of death ! He could hear the ravening snap of those Jaws out in the darkness. It I was sickening. His hand went to the Colt .45 at his belt, and he thrust Ills i empty rifle butt downward into the j snow. With the big automatic before | his eyes he plunged out into the dark ness, and from his lips there issued a ! wild yelling that could have been heard a mile away. With the yelling a steady stream of fire spat from the A Steady Stream of Fire Spat From the Colt Into the Mass of Fighting Beasts. Colt into the mass of fighting beasts. There were eight shots in the auto matic, and not until the plunger clicked with metallic emptiness did ■■ Carvel cease his yelling and retreat ! Into the firelight. He listened, breath- I ing deeply. He no longer saw eyes, in i the darkness, nor did he hear the movement of bodies. The suddenness and ferocity of his attack had driven back the wolf-horde. But the dog! He caught his breath, and strained his eyes. A shadow was dragging itself into the circle of light. It was Baree. Carvel ran to him, put his arms un der his shoulders, and brought him to the fire. For a long time after that there was a questioning light in Carvel’s eyes. He reloaded his guns, put fresh fuel on the fire, and from his pack dug out strips of cloth with which he bandaged three or four of the deepest cuts in Baree’s legs. And a dozen times he asked, in a wondering sort of way. “Now what the deuce made you do ! that, old chap? What have you got against the wolves?” j All that night he did not sleep, but watched. * * * * * * * Their experience with the wolves ' broke down the last bit of uncertainty that might have existed beween the man and the dog. For days after that, as they traveled slowly north and • west, Carvel nursed Baree as he might i have cared for a sick child. Because THE CHATHAM RECORD or the dog's hurts, he made only a few miles a day. Baree understood; and in him there grew stronger and stronger a great love for the man whose hands were as gentle as the Willow’S and whose voice warmed him with the thriJl of an Immeasurable comradeship. He no longer feared’ him or had a suspicion of him- ADMINISTRATOR’S NOTICE -pu su p'agtpshb itup slip* Suiabh ministrator of the estate of • : - r - - , . \ f •'* * - t • ! 4 * • * fc » ■. _• Jbr Economical Transportation ■*"l .jJew Smoothness —New Chevrolet again electrifies file world by increasing Chevrolet Values f *r at these Low Prices! ese 510 «£»645 FourDocr $ £? Scdan ** Landau $ 765 H-Ton Truck Sf JS Chassis Only J m J 1-Ton Truck C Chassis Only "T /II price* f. o. b. Flint, Mich. ■ K Mp* ■ xr* Bfl L&J oH ig u Bl ■HHN 53 JS Bbmw m B w 9 Bn BB 9yS |! B 3 9 H 8319 9B 9«< Bl IB| PITTSBORO, N. C. 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The Chatham Record (Pittsboro, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Aug. 19, 1926, edition 1
4
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