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Battle-scarred and covered with dried blood clots that still clung tenaciously to his long hair, he was a sight that drew at last a long despairing breath from Nepeese. A queer smile was growing in Pierrot's face as he leaned forward in his chair. Then slowly rising to his feet and looking closer, he said to Nepeese: "Ventre Saint Gris!
He Bush McTaggart was lord of this wilderness, master of its people, arbiter of their destinies. He was power and the law. The sun was well up when Pierrot, standing in front of his cabin with Nepeese, pointed to a rise in the trail three or four hundred yards away, over which McTaggart had just appeared. "He is coming." With a face which had aged since last night he looked at Nepeese.
He had told Pierrot that when the latter was his father-in-law, he would pay him double price for furs. And Pierrot had stared had stared with that strange, stunned look in his face, like a man dazed by a blow from a club. And so if he did not get Nepeese without trouble it would all be Pierrot's fault. Tomorrow McTaggart would start again for the half-breed's country.
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.
And Pierrot was dead. And he, in a few minutes, had accomplished it all. He turned back toward the cabin not by the trail over which he had pursued Nepeese, but straight through the thick bush. Great flakes of snow had begun to fall. He looked at the sky, where banks of dark clouds were rolling up from the south and east. The sun disappeared. Soon there would be a storm a heavy snowstorm.
His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and there was a wild flush in his face that was not altogether the work of wind and sun and storm, and a glow in his eyes that had not been there for five years, perhaps never before. His eyes were on Nepeese. She sat in the firelight, leaning a little toward the blaze, her wonderful hair warmly reflecting its mellow light.
And now, with each day that passed, the sun rose higher in the sky; it grew warmer; the snow softened underfoot, and in the air was the tremulous and growing throb of spring. With these things came the old yearning to Baree; the heart-thrilling call of the lonely graves back on the Gray Loon, of the burned cabin, the abandoned tepee beyond the pool and of Nepeese.
He, would have her if it cost PIERROT'S LIFE. And WHY NOT? It was all so easy. A shot on a lonely trap line, a single knife thrust and who would know? Who would guess where Pierrot had gone? And it would all be Pierrot's fault. For the last time he had seen Pierrot, he had made an honest proposition: he would marry Nepeese. Yes, even that. He had told Pierrot so.
I have had a dream that m'sieu will not go on a journey, but that he has lied, and that he will be SICK when I arrive at the Post. And yet, if it should happen that you care to go " Nepeese straightened suddenly, like a reed that has been caught by the wind. "Non!" she cried, so fiercely that Pierrot laughed, and rubbed his hands.
Nepeese not only carried a small pack on her shoulders in order that Pierrot's load might be lighter, but she trained Baree to bear tiny shoulder panniers which she manufactured. In these panniers Baree carried the bait. In at least a third of the total number of traps set there was always what Pierrot called trash rabbits, owls, whisky jacks, jays, and squirrels.
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