ightning; but now he had company, and the warmth and soft pressure of
the Willow's hand on his head and neck filled him with a strange
courage. He growled softly at the crashing thunder. He wanted to snap
at the lightning flashes. Under her hand Nepeese felt the stiffening of
his body, and in a moment of uncanny stillness she heard the sharp,
uneasy click of his teeth. Then the rain fell.

It was not like other rains Baree had known. It was an inundation
sweeping down out of the blackness of the skies. Within five minutes
the interior of the balsam shelter was a shower bath. After half an
hour of that torrential downpour, Nepeese was soaked to the skin. The
water ran in little rivulets down her body. It trickled in tiny streams
from her drenched braids and dropped from her long lashes, and the
blanket under her became wet as a mop. To Baree it was almost as bad as
his near-drowning in the stream after his fight with Papayuchisew, and
he snuggled closer and closer under the sheltering arm of the Willow.
It seemed an interminable time before the thunder rolled far to the
east, and the lightning died away into distant and intermittent
flashings. Even after that the rain fell for another hour. Then it
stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

With a laughing gasp Nepeese rose to her feet. The water gurgled in her
moccasins as she walked out into the open. She paid no attention to
Baree--and he followed her. Across the open in the treetops the last of
the storm clouds were drifting away. A star shone--then another; and
the Willow stood watching them as they appeared until there were so
many she could not count. It was no longer black. A wonderful starlight
flooded the open after the inky gloom of the storm.

Nepeese looked down and saw Baree. He was standing quietly and
unleashed, with freedom on all sides of him. Yet he did not run. He was
waiting, wet as a water rat, with his eyes fixed on her expectantly.
Nepeese made a movement toward him, and hesitated.

"No, you will not run away, Baree. I will leave you free. And now we
must have a fire!"

A fire! Anyone but Pierrot might have said that she was crazy. Not a
stem or twig in the forest that was not dripping! They could hear the
trickle of running water all about them.

"A fire," she said again. "Let us hunt for the wuskisi, Baree."

With her wet clothes clinging to her lightly, she was like a slim
shadow as she crossed the soggy clearing and lost herself among the
f