The dog corral was open and empty.  McTaggart had seen to that.  Again Baree squatted back on his haunches and sent forth the death howl.  This time it was for Pierrot.  In it there was a different note from that of the howl he had sent forth from the chasm:  it was positive, certain.  In the chasm his cry had been tempered with doubt—­a questioning hope, something that was so almost human that McTaggart had shivered on the trail.  But Baree knew what lay in that freshly dug snow-covered grave.  A scant three feet of earth could not hide its secret from him.  There was death—­definite and unequivocal.  But for Nepeese he was still hoping and seeking.

Until noon he did not go far from the site of the cabin, but only once did he actually approach and sniff about the black pile of steaming timbers.  Again and again he circled the edge of the clearing, keeping just within the bush and timber, sniffing the air and listening.  Twice he went hack to the chasm.  Late in the afternoon there came to him a sudden impulse that carried him swiftly through the forest.  He did not run openly now.  Caution, suspicion, and fear had roused in him afresh the instincts of the wolf.  With his ears flattened against the side of his head, his tail drooping until the tip of it dragged the snow and his back sagging in the curious, evasive gait of the wolf, he scarcely made himself distinguishable from the shadows of the spruce and balsams.

There was no faltering in the trail Baree made; it was straight as a rope might have been drawn through the forest, and it brought him, early in the dusk, to the open spot where Nepeese had fled with him that day she had pushed McTaggart over the edge of the precipice into the pool.  In the place of the balsam shelter of that day there was now a watertight birchbark tepee which Pierrot had helped the Willow to make during the summer.  Baree went straight to it and thrust in his head with a low and expectant whine.

There was no answer.  It was dark and cold in the tepee.  He could make out indistinctly the two blankets that were always in it, the row of big tin boxes in which Nepeese kept their stores, and the stove which Pierrot had improvised out of scraps of iron and heavy tin.  But Nepeese was not there.  And there was no sign of her outside.  The snow was unbroken except by his own trail.  It was dark when he returned to the burned cabin.  All that night he hung about the deserted dog corral, and all through the night the snow fell steadily, so that by dawn he sank into it to his shoulders when he moved out into the clearing.

But with day the sky had cleared.  The sun came up, and the world was almost too dazzling for the eyes.  It warmed Baree’s blood with new hope and expectation.  His brain struggled even more eagerly than yesterday to comprehend.  Surely the Willow would be returning soon!  He would hear her voice.  She would appear suddenly out of the forest.  He would receive some signal from her.