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She did not foresee the peril that in an instant would have stamped the wild flush from her face and curdled the blood in her veins she did not guess that McTaggart had become for her a deadlier menace than ever. Nepeese knew that he must be angry. But what had she to fear? Mon pere would be angry, too, if she told him what had happened at the edge of the chasm. But she would not tell him.
He was panting. His eyes were bloodshot. But even now, after all his hours of agony, neither his spirit nor his courage was broken. When he saw McTaggart he made a lunge to his feet, almost instantly crumpling down into the snow again. But his forefeet were braced. His head and chest remained up, and the snarl that came from his throat was tigerish in its ferocity.
Jim Carvel held out his hand, and the snarl that was in Baree's throat died away. The man rose to his feet. He stood there, looking in the direction taken by Bush McTaggart, and chuckled in a curious, exultant sort of way. There was friendliness even in that chuckle. There was friendliness in his eyes and in the shine of his teeth as he looked again at Baree.
They called him Napao Wetikoo the man-devil. This was under their breath a name whispered sinisterly in the glow of tepee fires, or spoken softly where not even the winds might carry it to the ears of Bush McTaggart. They feared him; they hated him.
A coquettish uplift of her eyes caught McTaggart, and she looked straight at him half smiling, as she spoke to her father: "I will join you soon, mon pere you and M'sieu the Factor from Lac Bain!" There were undeniable little devils in her eyes, McTaggart thought little devils laughing full at him as she spoke, setting his brain afire and his blood to throbbing wildly.
What sensible man would seek to refute the concrete decisions of such persons by tracing them to abstract premises, such as that 'all actresses must marry, 'all clergymen must be laymen, 'all politicians should resign their posts'? Yet this type of refutation, absolutely unavailing though it be for purposes of conversion, is spread by Mr. McTaggart through many pages of his book.
They died of starvation and sickness, and the tighter Bush McTaggart clenched the fingers of his iron rule, the more meekly, it seemed to him, did they respond to his mastery. His was a small soul, hidden in the hulk of a brute, which rejoiced in power. And here with the raw wilderness on four sides of him his power knew no end. The big company was behind him.
McTaggart led the way. At the end of half an hour the stranger stopped, and pointed north. "Straight up there a good five hundred miles," he said, speaking as lightly as though he would reach home that night. "I'll leave you here." He made no offer to shake hands. But in going, he said: "You might report that John Madison has passed this way."
She was looking into her mirror, her face flushed and her eyes aglow in the excitement of the struggle to fashion one of the coveted ringlets from a tress that fell away below her hips, when the door opened behind her, and Bush McTaggart walked in. The Willow's back was toward the door when the factor from Lac Bain entered the cabin, and for a few startled seconds she did not turn.
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.
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