30
d Baree from instant death. She turned again, and called:
"Uchimoo--Uchimoo--Uchimoo!"
Her eyes were no longer filled with the thrill of slaughter.
"He would not understand that," said Pierrot, leading the way across the open. "He is wild--born of the wolves. Perhaps he was of Koomo's lead bitch, who ran away to hunt with the packs last winter."
"And he will die--"
"Ayetun--yes, he will die."
But Baree had no idea of dying. He was too tough a youngster to be shocked to death by a bullet passing through the soft flesh of his foreleg. That was what had happened. His leg was torn to the bone, but the bone itself was untouched. He waited until the moon had risen before he crawled out of his hole.
His leg had grown stiff, but it had stopped bleeding, though his whole body was racked by a terrible pain. A dozen Papayuchisews, all holding right to his ears and nose, could not have hurt him more. Every time he moved, a sharp twinge shot through him; and yet he persisted in moving. Instinctively he felt that by traveling away from the hole he would get away from danger. This was the best thing that could have happened to him, for a little later a porcupine came wandering along, chattering to itself in its foolish, good-humored way, and fell with a fat thud into the hole. Had Baree remained, he would have been so full of quills that he must surely have died.
In another way the exercise of travel was good for Baree. It gave his wound no opportunity to "set," as Pierrot would have said, for in reality his hurt was more painful than serious. For the first hundred yards he hobbled along on three legs, and after that he found that he could use his fourth by humoring it a great deal. He followed the creek for a half mile. Whenever a bit of brush touched his wound, he would snap at it viciously, and instead of whimpering when he felt one of the sharp twinges shooting through him, an angry little growl gathered in his throat, and his teeth clicked. Now that he was out