For many weeks after MacDonald’s visit there followed tranquil days on the Gray Loon.  They were wonderful days for Baree.  At first he was suspicious of Pierrot.  After a little he tolerated him, and at last accepted him as a part of the cabin—­and Nepeese.  It was the Willow whose shadow he became.  Pierrot noted the attachment with the deepest satisfaction.

“Ah, in a few months more, if he should leap at the throat of M’sieu the Factor,” he said to himself one day.

In September, when he was six months old, Baree was almost as large as Gray Wolf—­big-boned, long-fanged, with a deep chest, and jaws that could already crack a bone as if it were a stick.  He was with Nepeese whenever and wherever she moved.  They swam together in the two pools—­the pool in the forest and the pool between the chasm walls.  At first it alarmed Baree to see Nepeese dive from the rock wall over which she had pushed McTaggart, but at the end of a month she had taught him to plunge after her through that twenty feet of space.

It was late in August when Baree saw the first of his kind outside of Kazan and Gray Wolf.  During the summer Pierrot allowed his dogs to run at large on a small island in the center of a lake two or three miles away, and twice a week he netted fish for them.  On one of these trips Nepeese accompanied him and took Baree with her.  Pierrot carried his long caribou-gut whip.  He expected a fight.  But there was none.  Baree joined the pack in their rush for fish, and ate with them.  This pleased Pierrot more than ever.

“He will make a great sledge dog,” he chuckled.  “It is best to leave him for a week with the pack, ma Nepeese.”

Reluctantly Nepeese gave her consent.  While the dogs were still at their fish, they started homeward.  Their canoe had slipped away before Baree discovered the trick they had played on him.  Instantly he leaped into the water and swam after them—­and the Willow helped him into his canoe.

Early in September a passing Indian brought Pierrot word of Bush McTaggart.  The factor had been very sick.  He had almost died from the blood poison, but he was well now.  With the first exhilarating tang of autumn in the air a new dread oppressed Pierrot.  But at present he said nothing of what was in his mind to Nepeese.  The Willow had almost forgotten the factor from Lac Bain, for the glory and thrill of wilderness autumn was in her blood.  She went on long trips with Pierrot, helping him to blaze out the new trap lines that would be used when the first snows came, and on these journeys she was always accompanied by Baree.

Most of Nepeese’s spare hours she spent in training him for the sledge.  She began with a babiche string and a stick.  It was a whole day before she could induce Baree to drag this stick without turning at every other step to snap and growl at it.  Then she fastened another length of babiche to him, and made him drag two sticks.  Thus little by little she trained him to the sledge harness, until at the end of a fortnight he was tugging heroically at anything she had a mind to fasten him to.  Pierrot brought home two of the dogs from the island, and Baree was put into training with these, and helped to drag the empty sledge.  Nepeese was delighted.  On the day the first light snow fell she clapped her hands and cried to Pierrot: