“In there!” And she pointed.

They went in.

Ahead of them Baree was running for his life.  He sensed instinctively the fact that these wonderful two-legged beings he had looked upon were all-powerful.  And they were after him!  He could hear them.  Nepeese was following almost as swiftly as he could run.  Suddenly he turned into a cleft between two great rocks.  Twenty feet in, his way was barred, and he ran back.  When he darted out, straight up the canyon, Nepeese was not a dozen yards behind him, and he saw Pierrot almost at her side.  The Willow gave a cry.

“Mana—­mana—­there he is!”

She caught her breath, and darted into a copse of young balsams where Baree had disappeared.  Like a great entangling web her loose hair impeded her in the brush, and with an encouraging cry to Pierrot she stopped to gather it over her shoulder as he ran past her.  She lost only a moment or two, and then once again was after him.  Fifty yards ahead of her Pierrot gave a warning shout.  Baree had turned.  Almost in the same breath he was tearing over his back trail, directly toward the Willow.  He did not see her in time to stop or swerve aside, and Nepeese flung herself down in his path.  For an instant or two they were together.  Baree felt the smother of her hair, and the clutch of her hands.  Then he squirmed away and darted again toward the blind end of the canyon.

Nepeese sprang to her feet.  She was panting—­and laughing.  Pierrot came back wildly, and the Willow pointed beyond him.

“I had him—­and he didn’t bite!” she said, breathing swiftly.  She still pointed to the end of the canyon, and she said again:  “I had him—­and he didn’t bite me, Nootawe!”

That was the wonder of it.  She had been reckless—­and Baree had not bitten her!  It was then, with her eyes shining at Pierrot, and the smile fading slowly from her lips, that she spoke softly the word “Baree,” which in her tongue meant “the wild dog”—­a little brother of the wolf.

“Come,” cried Pierrot, “or we will lose him!”

Pierrot was confident.  The canyon had narrowed.  Baree could not get past them unseen.  Three minutes later Baree came to the blind end of the canyon—­a wall of rock that rose straight up like the curve of a dish.  Feasting on fish and long hours of sleep had fattened him, and he was half winded as he sought vainly for an exit.  He was at the far end of the dishlike curve of rock, without a bush or a clump of grass to hide him, when Pierrot and Nepeese saw him again.  Nepeese made straight toward him.  Pierrot, foreseeing what Baree would do, hurried to the left, at right angles to the end of the canyon.