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"He hates you hates you hates you " the Willow was repeating over and over again into McTaggart's startled face. Then suddenly she turned to her father. "No, he will not tear the life from me," she cried. "See! It is Baree. Did I not tell you that? It is Baree! Is it not proof that he defended me " "From me!" gasped McTaggart, his face darkening.
Then he heard a sound that made every drop of blood in him thrill. He was close to McTaggart's camp, and what he had heard was a rabbit in one of McTaggart's snares. He came out into a little starlit open and there he saw the rabbit going through a most marvelous pantomime. It amazed him for a moment, and he stopped in his tracks.
His greatest pleasure came to be not in eating but in destroying. The fires of his hatred burned fiercer as the weeks passed, until at last he would snap and tear with his long fangs at the snow where McTaggart's feet had passed. And all of the time, away back of his madness, there was a vision of Nepeese that continued to grow more and more clearly in his brain.
One of his forefeet was caught well up toward the first joint; both hind feet were caught. A fourth trap had closed on his flank, and in tearing the jaws loose he had pulled off a patch of skin half as big as McTaggart's hand. The snow told the story of his desperate fight all through the night. His bleeding jaws showed how vainly he had tried to break the imprisoning steel with his teeth.
A word from Nepeese in that moment, and it would have been over. But an instant was lost an instant before her cry came. In that moment man's hand and brain worked swifter than brute understanding; and as Baree launched himself at the factor's throat, there came a flash and a deafening explosion almost in the Willow's eyes. It was a chance shot, a shot from the hip with McTaggart's automatic.
Never had she looked quite so much like a woman, and Pierrot's eyes were deep-shadowed with fear and uneasiness as he watched her while she gazed off into the northwest toward Lac Bain. She was wonderful, this slip of a girl-woman. Her beauty troubled him. He had seen the look in Bush McTaggart's eyes. He had heard the thrill in McTaggart's voice.
A hoarse cry of exultation burst from McTaggart's lips as he drew nearer and looked at the snow. It was packed hard for many feet about the trap house, where Baree had struggled, and it was red with blood. The blood had come mostly from Baree's jaws. They were dripping now as he glared at his enemy. The steel jaws hidden under the snow had done their merciless work well.
Yet he did not whine. They began to journey before the sun was up, for if Baree's blood was almost dead within him, Bush McTaggart's was scorching his body. He made his last plans as he walked swiftly through the forest with Baree under his arm. He would send Pierrot at once for Father Grotin at his mission seventy miles to the west. He would marry Nepeese yes, marry her!
Pierrot was calling! He had come to the fork in the trail, and he was calling the Willow's name! McTaggart's hot hand came over her mouth. "Don't answer," she heard him say. Strength anger hatred flared up in her, and fiercely she struck the hand down. Something in her wonderful eyes held McTaggart. They blazed into his very soul.
He made an effort to raise himself, that he might spring at this man-monster. In the effort, swaddled as he was in the blanket, he rolled over in a helpless and ludicrous heap. The sight of it touched McTaggart's risibilities, and he laughed. He sat down with his back to the tree again and filled his pipe. Baree did not take his eyes from McTaggart as he smoked.
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