friend. He buried his teeth in it. His jaws crunched it. New fire
leapt into his blood as he feasted, but not for an instant did his
reddened eyes leave the other's face. Carvel replaced his pack. He rose
to his feet, took up his 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 he stood motionless in his tracks gazing at Carvel as he
strode into the north. A sudden 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 his
throat. The man was just about to disappear into the thick spruce. He
paused, and looked back.

"Coming, Boy?"

Even at that distance Baree could see him grinning affably. He saw the
outstretched hand, and the voice stirred new sensations in him. It was
not 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 wanted to answer it. He
was filled with a desire, all at once, to follow close at the heels of
this stranger. For the first time in his life a craving for the
friendship of man possessed him. 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 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 his back to a tree Carvel was smoking luxuriously. He
had 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 their clear alertness.

"Seems good to have someone to talk to," he was saying to Baree.
"Someone who can understand, an' keep his mouth shut. Did you ever want
to howl, an' didn't dare? Well, that's me. Sometimes I've