|
BAREE - SON OF KAZAN
BAREE - SON OF KAZAN JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD I have always disliked the preaching of sermons in the pages of
romance. It is like placing a halter about an unsuspecting reader's
neck and dragging him into paths for which he may have no liking. But
if fact and truth produce in the reader's mind a message for himself
then a work has been done. That is what I hope for in my nature books.
The American people are not and never have been lovers of wild life. As
a nation we have gone after Nature with a gun.
And what right you may ask has a confessed slaughterer of wild life
such as I have been to complain? None at all I assure you. I have
twenty-seven guns--and I have used them all. I stand condemned as
having done more than my share toward extermination. But that does not
lessen the fact that I have learned; and in learning I have come to
believe that if boys and girls and men and women could be brought into
the homes and lives of wild birds and animals as their homes are made
and their lives are lived we would all understand at last that wherever
a heart beats it is very much like our own in the final analysis of
things. To see a bird singing on a twig means but little; but to live a
season with that bird to be with it in courting days in matehood and
motherhood to understand its griefs as well as its gladness means a
great deal. And in my books it is my desire to tell of the lives of the
wild things which I know as they are actually lived. It is not my
desire to humanize them. If we are to love wild animals so much that we
do not want to kill them we MUST KNOW THEM AS THEY ACTUALLY LIVE. And
in their lives in the facts of their lives there is so much of real
and honest romance and tragedy so much that makes them akin to
ourselves that the animal biographer need not step aside from the paths
of actuality to hold one's interest.
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.
During these first days of his life his home was in the heart of a
great windfall where Gray Wolf his blind mother had found a safe nest
for his babyhood and to which Kazan her mate came only now and then
his eyes gleaming like strange balls of greenish fire in the darkness.
It was Kazan's eyes that gave to Baree his first impression of
something existing away from his mother's side and they brought to him
also his discovery of vision. He could feel he could smell he could
hear--but in that black pit under the fallen timber he had never seen
until the eyes came. At first they frightened him; then they puzzled
him and his fear changed to an immense curiosity. He would be looking
straight at them when all at once they would disappear. This was when
Kazan turned his head. And then they would flash back at him again out
of the darkness with such startling suddenness that Baree would
involuntarily shrink closer to his mother who always trembled and
shivered in a strange sort of way when Kazan came in.
Baree of course would never know their story. He would never know
that Gray Wolf his mother was a full-blooded wolf and that Kazan
his father was a dog. In him nature was already beginning its
wonderful work but it would never go beyond certain limitations. It
would tell him in time that his beautiful wolf mother was blind but
he would never know of that terrible battle between Gray Wolf and the
lynx in which his mother's sight had been destroyed. Nature could tell
him nothing of Kazan's merciless vengeance of the wonderful years of
their matehood of their loyalty their strange adventures in the great
Canadian wilderness--it could make him only a son of Kazan.
But at first and for many days it was all mother. Even after his eyes
had opened wide and he had found his legs so that he could stumble
about a little in the darkness nothing existed for Baree but his
mother. When he was old enough to be playing with sticks and moss out
in the sunlight he still did not know what she looked like. But to him
she was big and soft and warm and she licked his face with her tongue
and talked to him in a gentle whimpering way that at last made him
find his own voice in a faint squeaky yap.
And then came that wonderful day when the greenish balls of fire that
were Kazan's eyes came nearer and nearer a little at a time and very
cautiously. Heretofore Gray Wolf had warned him back. To be alone was
the first law of her wild breed during mothering time. A low snarl from
her throat and Kazan had always stopped. But on this day the snarl did
not come. In Gray Wolf's throat it died away in a low whimpering
sound. A note of loneliness of gladness of a great yearning. "It is
all right now" she was saying to Kazan; and Kazan--pausing for a
moment to make sure--replied with an answering note deep in his throat.
Still slowly as if not quite sure of what he would find Kazan came to
them and Baree snuggled closer to his mother. He heard Kazan as he
dropped down heavily on his belly close to Gray Wolf. He was
unafraid--and mightily curious. And Kazan too was curious. He
sniffed. In the gloom his ears were alert. After a little Baree began
to move. An inch at a time he dragged himself away from Gray Wolf's
side. Every muscle in her lithe body tensed. Again her wolf blood was
warning her. There was danger for Baree. Her lips drew back baring her
fangs. Her throat trembled but the note in it never came. Out of the
darkness two yards away came a soft puppyish whine and the caressing
sound of Kazan's tongue.
Baree had felt the thrill of his first great adventure. He had
discovered his father.
This all happened in the third week of Baree's life. He was just
eighteen days old when Gray Wolf allowed Kazan to make the acquaintance
of his son. If it had not been for Gray Wolf's blindness and the memory
of that day on the Sun Rock when the lynx had destroyed her eyes she
would have given birth to Baree in the open and his legs would have
been quite strong. He would have known the sun and the moon and the
stars; he would have realized what the thunder meant and would have
seen the lightning flashing in the sky. But as it was there had been
nothing for him to do in that black cavern under the windfall but
stumble about a little in the darkness and lick with his tiny red
tongue the raw bones that were strewn about them. Many times he had
been left alone. He had heard his mother come and go and nearly always
it had been in response to a yelp from Kazan that came to them like a
distant echo. He had never felt a very strong desire to follow until
this day when Kazan's big cool tongue caressed his face. In those
wonderful seconds nature was at work. His instinct was not quite born
until then. And when Kazan went away leaving them alone in darkness
Baree whimpered for him to come back just as he had cried for his
mother when now and then she had left him in response to her mate's
call.
The sun was straight above the forest when an hour or two after
Kazan's visit Gray Wolf slipped away. Between Baree's nest and the top
of the windfall were forty feet of jammed and broken timber through
which not a ray of light could break. This blackness did not frighten
him for he had yet to learn the meaning of light. Day and not night
was to fill him with his first great terror. So quite fearlessly with
a yelp for his mother to wait for him he began to follow. If Gray Wolf
heard him she paid no attention to his call and the sound of the
scraping of her claws on the dead timber died swiftly away.
This time Baree did not stop at the eight-inch log which had always
shut in his world in that particular direction. He clambered to the top
of it and rolled over on the other side. Beyond this was vast
adventure and he plunged into it courageously.
It took him a long time to make the first twenty yards. Then he came to
a log worn smooth by the feet of Gray Wolf and Kazan and stopping
every few feet to send out a whimpering call for his mother he made
his way farther and farther along it. As he went there grew slowly a
curious change in this world of his. He had known nothing but
blackness. And now this blackness seemed breaking itself up into
strange shapes and shadows. Once he caught the flash of a fiery streak
above him--a gleam of sunshine--and it startled him so that he
flattened himself down upon the log and did not move for half a minute.
Then he went on. An ermine squeaked under him. He heard the swift
rustling of a squirrel's feet and a curious whut-whut-whut that was
not at all like any sound his mother had ever made. He was off the
trail.
The log was no longer smooth and it was leading him upward higher and
higher into the tangle of the windfall and was growing narrower every
foot he progressed. He whined. His soft little nose sought vainly for
the warm scent of his mother. The end came suddenly when he lost his
balance and fell. He let out a piercing cry of terror as he felt
himself slipping and then plunged downward. He must have been high up
in the windfall for to Baree it seemed a tremendous fall. His soft
little body thumped from log to log as he shot this way and that and
when at last he stopped there was scarcely a breath left in him. But
he stood up quickly on his four trembling legs--and blinked.
A new terror held Baree rooted there. In an instant the whole world had
changed. It was a flood of sunlight. Everywhere he looked he could see
strange things. But it was the sun that frightened him most. It was his
first impression of fire and it made his eyes smart. He would have
slunk back into the friendly gloom of the windfall but at this moment
Gray Wolf came around the end of a great log followed by Kazan. She
muzzled Baree joyously and Kazan in a most doglike fashion wagged his
tail. This mark of the dog was to be a part of Baree. Half wolf he
would always wag his tail. He tried to wag it now. Perhaps Kazan saw
the effort for he emitted a muffled yelp of approbation as he sat back
on his haunches.
Or he might have been saying to Gray Wolf:
"Well we've got the little rascal out of that windfall at last
haven't we?"
For Baree it had been a great day. He had discovered his father--and
the world.
CHAPTER 2
And it was a wonderful world--a world of vast silence empty of
everything but the creatures of the wild. The nearest Hudson's Bay post
was a hundred miles away and the first town of civilization was a
straight three hundred to the south. Two years before Tusoo the Cree
trapper had called this his domain. It had come down to him as was
the law of the forests through generations of forefathers. But Tusoo
had been the last of his worn-out family; he had died of smallpox and
his wife and his children had died with him. Since then no human foot
had taken up his trails. The lynx had multiplied. The moose and caribou
had gone unhunted by man. The beaver had built their
homes--undisturbed. The tracks of the black bear were as thick as the
tracks of the deer farther south. And where once the deadfalls and
poison baits of Tusoo had kept the wolves thinned down there was no
longer a menace for these mohekuns of the wilderness.
Following the sun of this first wonderful day came the moon and the
stars of Baree's first real night. It was a splendid night and with it
a full red moon sailed up over the forests flooding the earth with a
new kind of light softer and more beautiful to Baree. The wolf was
strong in him and he was restless. He had slept that day in the warmth
of the sun but he could not sleep in this glow of the moon. He nosed
uneasily about Gray Wolf who lay flat on her belly her beautiful head
alert listening yearningly to the night sounds and for the tonguing
of Kazan who had slunk away like a shadow to hunt.
Half a dozen times as Baree wandered about near the windfall he heard
a soft whir over his head and once or twice he saw gray shadows
floating swiftly through the air. They were the big northern owls
swooping down to investigate him and if he had been a rabbit instead
of a wolf dog whelp his first night under the moon and stars would
have been his last; for unlike Wapoos the rabbit he was not cautious.
Gray Wolf did not watch him closely. Instinct told her that in these
forests there was no great danger for Baree except at the hands of man.
In his veins ran the blood of the wolf. He was a hunter of all other
wild creatures but no other creature either winged or fanged hunted
him.
In a way Baree sensed this. He was not afraid of the owls. He was not
afraid of the strange bloodcurdling cries they made in the black spruce
tops. But once fear entered into him and he scurried back to his
mother. It was when one of the winged hunters of the air swooped down
on a snowshoe rabbit and the squealing agony of the doomed creature
set his heart thumping like a little hammer. He felt in those cries the
nearness of that one ever-present tragedy of the wild--death. He felt
it again that night when snuggled close to Gray Wolf he listened to
the fierce outcry of a wolf pack that was close on the heels of a young
caribou bull. And the meaning of it all and the wild thrill of it all
came home to him early in the gray dawn when Kazan returned holding
between his jaws a huge rabbit that was still kicking and squirming
with life.
This rabbit was the climax in the first chapter of Baree's education.
It was as if Gray Wolf and Kazan had planned it all out so that he
might receive his first instruction in the art of killing. When Kazan
had dropped it Baree approached the big hare cautiously. The back of
Wapoos the rabbit was broken. His round eyes were glazed and he had
ceased to feel pain. But to Baree as he dug his tiny teeth into the
heavy fur under Wapoos's throat the hare was very much alive. The
teeth did not go through into the flesh. With puppyish fierceness Baree
hung on. He thought that he was killing. He could feel the dying
convulsions of Wapoos. He could hear the last gasping breaths leaving
the warm body and he snarled and tugged until finally he fell back
with a mouthful of fur. When he returned to the attack Wapoos was
quite dead and Baree continued to bite and snarl until Gray Wolf came
with her sharp fangs and tore the rabbit to pieces. After that followed
the feast.
So Baree came to understand that to eat meant to kill and as other
days and nights passed there grew in him swiftly the hunger for flesh.
In this he was the true wolf. From Kazan he had taken other and
stronger inheritances of the dog. He was magnificently black which in
later days gave him the name of Kusketa Mohekun--the black wolf. On his
breast was a white star. His right ear was tipped with white. His tail
at six weeks was bushy and hung low. It was a wolf's tail. His ears
were Gray Wolf's ears--sharp short pointed always alert. His
foreshoulders gave promise of being splendidly like Kazan's and when
he stood up he was like the trace dog except that he always stood
sidewise to the point or object he was watching. This again was the
wolf for a dog faces the direction in which he is looking intently.
One brilliant night when Baree was two months old and when the sky
was filled with stars and a June moon so bright that it seemed scarcely
higher than the tall spruce tops Baree settled back on his haunches
and howled. It was a first effort. But there was no mistake in the note
of it. It was the wolf howl. But a moment later when Baree slunk up to
Kazan as if deeply ashamed of his effort he was wagging his tail in
an unmistakably apologetic manner. And this again was the dog. If
Tusoo the dead Indian trapper could have seen him then he would have
judged him by that wagging of his tail. It revealed the fact that deep
in his heart--and in his soul if we can concede that he had one--Baree
was a dog.
In another way Tusoo would have found judgment of him. At two months
the wolf whelp has forgotten how to play. He is a slinking part of the
wilderness already at work preying on creatures smaller and more
helpless than himself. Baree still played. In his excursions away from
the windfall he had never gone farther than the creek a hundred yards
from where his mother lay. He had helped to tear many dead and dying
rabbits into pieces. He believed if he thought upon the matter at all
that he was exceedingly fierce and courageous. But it was his ninth
week before he felt his spurs and fought his terrible battle with the
young owl in the edge of the thick forest.
The fact that Oohoomisew the big snow owl had made her nest in a
broken stub not far from the windfall was destined to change the whole
course of Baree's life just as the blinding of Gray Wolf had changed
hers and a man's club had changed Kazan's. The creek ran close past
the stub which had been shriven by lightning; and this stub stood in a
still dark place in the forest surrounded by tall black spruce and
enveloped in gloom even in broad day. Many times Baree had gone to the
edge of this mysterious part of the forest and had peered in curiously
and with a growing desire.
On this day of his great battle its lure was overpowering. Little by
little he entered into it his eyes shining brightly and his ears alert
for the slightest sounds that might come out of it. His heart beat
faster. The gloom enveloped him more. He forgot the windfall and Kazan
and Gray Wolf. Here before him lay the thrill of adventure. He heard
strange sounds but very soft sounds as if made by padded feet and
downy wings and they filled him with a thrilling expectancy. Under his
feet there were no grass or weeds or flowers but a wonderful brown
carpet of soft evergreen needles. They felt good to his feet and were
so velvety that he could not hear his own movement.
He was fully three hundred yards from the windfall when he passed
Oohoomisew's stub and into a thick growth of young balsams. And
there--directly in his path--crouched the monster!
Papayuchisew [Young Owl] was not more than a third as large as Baree.
But he was a terrifying-looking object. To Baree he seemed all head and
eyes. He could see no body at all. Kazan had never brought in anything
like this and for a full half-minute he remained very quiet eying it
speculatively. Papayuchisew did not move a feather. But as Baree
advanced a cautious step at a time the bird's eyes grew bigger and
the feathers about his head ruffled up as if stirred by a puff of wind.
He came of a fighting family this little Papayuchisew--a savage
fearless and killing family--and even Kazan would have taken note of
those ruffling feathers.
With a space of two feet between them the pup and the owlet eyed each
other. In that moment if Gray Wolf could have been there she might
have said to Baree: "Use your legs--and run!" And Oohoomisew the old
owl might have said to Papayuchisew: "You little fool--use your wings
and fly!"
They did neither--and the fight began.
Papayuchisew started it and with a single wild yelp Baree went back in
a heap the owlet's beak fastened like a red-hot vise in the soft flesh
at the end of his nose. That one yelp of surprise and pain was Baree's
first and last cry in the fight. The wolf surged in him; rage and the
desire to kill possessed him. As Papayuchisew hung on he made a
curious hissing sound; and as Baree rolled and gnashed his teeth and
fought to free himself from that amazing grip on his nose fierce
little snarls rose out of his throat.
For fully a minute Baree had no use of his jaws. Then by accident he
wedged Papayuchisew in a crotch of a low ground shrub and a bit of his
nose gave way. He might have run then but instead of that he was back
at the owlet like a flash. Flop went Papayuchisew on his back and
Baree buried his needlelike teeth in the bird's breast. It was like
trying to bite through a pillow the feathers fangs and just as they
were beginning to prick the owlet's skin Papayuchisew--jabbing a
little blindly with a beak that snapped sharply every time it
closed--got him by the ear.
The pain of that hold was excruciating to Baree and he made a more
desperate effort to get his teeth through his enemy's thick armor of
feathers. In the struggle they rolled under the low balsams to the edge
of the ravine through which ran the creek. Over the steep edge they
plunged and as they rolled and bumped to the bottom Baree loosed his
hold. Papayuchisew hung valiantly on and when they reached the bottom
he still had his grip on Baree's ear.
Baree's nose was bleeding. His ear felt as if it were being pulled from
his head; and in this uncomfortable moment a newly awakened instinct
made Baby Papayuchisew discover his wings as a fighting asset. An owl
has never really begun to fight until he uses his wings and with a
joyous hissing Papayuchisew began beating his antagonist so fast and
so viciously that Baree was dazed. He was compelled to close his eyes
and he snapped blindly. For the first time since the battle began he
felt a strong inclination to get away. He tried to tear himself free
with his forepaws but Papayuchisew--slow to reason but of firm
conviction--hung to Baree's ear like grim fate.
At this critical point when the understanding of defeat was forming
itself swiftly in Baree's mind chance saved him. His fangs closed on
one of the owlet's tender feet. Papayuchisew gave a sudden squeak. The
ear was free at last--and with a snarl of triumph Baree gave a vicious
tug at Papayuchisew's leg.
In the excitement of battle he had not heard the rushing tumult of the
creek close under them and over the edge of a rock Papayuchisew and he
went together the chill water of the rain-swollen stream muffling a
final snarl and a final hiss of the two little fighters.
CHAPTER 3
To Papayuchisew after his first mouthful of water the stream was
almost as safe as the air for he went sailing down it with the
lightness of a gull wondering in his slow-thinking big head why he was
moving so swiftly and so pleasantly without any effort of his own.
To Baree it was a different matter. He went down almost like a stone. A
mighty roaring filled his ears; it was dark suffocating terrible. In
the swift current he was twisted over and over. For a distance of
twenty feet he was under water. Then he rose to the surface and
desperately began using his legs. It was of little use. He had only
time to blink once or twice and catch a lungful of air when he shot
into a current that was running like a millrace between the butts of
...
|
Open Literature 
