The snow was falling now, and McTaggart had returned to the cabin.  After a little Baree followed in the trail he had made along the edge of the chasm, and wherever McTaggart had stopped to peer over, Baree paused also.  For a space his hatred of the man was lost in his desire to join the Willow, and he continued along the gorge until, a quarter of a mile beyond where the factor had last looked into it, he came to the narrow trail down which he and Nepeese had many time adventured in quest of rock violets.  The twisting path that led down the face of the cliff was filled with snow now, but Baree made his way through it until at last he stood at the edge of the unfrozen torrent.  Nepeese was not here.  He whined, and barked again, but this time there was in his signal to her an uneasy repression, a whimpering note which told that he did not expect a reply.  For five minutes after that he sat on his haunches in the snow, stolid as a rock.  What it was that came down out of the dark mystery and tumult of the chasm to him, what spirit whispers of nature that told him the truth, it is beyond the power of reason to explain.  But he listened, and he looked; and his muscles twitched as the truth grew in him.  And at last he raised his head slowly until his black muzzle pointed to the white storm in the sky, and out of his throat there went forth the quavering, long-drawn howl of the husky who mourns outside the tepee of a master who is newly dead.

On the trail, heading for Lac Bain, Bush McTaggart heard that cry and shivered.

It was the smell of smoke, thickening in the air until it stung his nostrils, that drew Baree at last away from the chasm and back to the cabin.  There was not much left when he came to the clearing.  Where the cabin had been was a red-hot, smoldering mass.  For a long time he sat watching it, still waiting and still listening.  He no longer felt the effect of the bullet that had stunned him, but his senses were undergoing another change now, as strange and unreal as their struggle against that darkness of near death in the cabin.  In a space that had not covered more than an hour the world had twisted itself grotesquely for Baree.  That long ago the Willow was sitting before her little mirror in the cabin, talking to him and laughing in her happiness, while he lay in vast contentment on the floor.  And now there was no cabin, no Nepeese, no Pierrot.  Quietly he struggled to comprehend.  It was some time before he moved from under the thick balsams, for already a deep and growing suspicion began to guide his movements.  He did not go nearer to the smoldering mass of the cabin, but slinking low, made his way about the circle of the clearing to the dog corral.  This took him under the tall spruce.  For a full minute he paused here, sniffing at the freshly made mound under its white mantle of snow.  When he went on, he slunk still lower, and his ears were flat against his head.