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Updated: May 14, 2025
For a time there was a silence broken only by the crackling of the flames, and in that silence Carvel's fingers weaved in and out of the silken strands of the Willow's hair. His thoughts flashed back. What a chance he had missed that day on Bush McTaggart's trap line if he had only known!
McTaggart's hand did not go to the pistol in his holster, and Pierrot did not touch the knife in his belt. When they came together, it was throat to throat two beasts now, instead of one, for Pierrot had in him the fury and strength of the wolf, the cat, and the panther.
Then he followed. That night they were camped in a dense growth of cedars and balsams ten miles north of Bush McTaggart's trap line. For two hours it had snowed, and their trail was covered. It was still snowing, but not a flake of the white deluge sifted down through the thick canopy of boughs. Carvel had put up his small silk tent, and had built a fire.
Foxes and wolves ate of flesh from which his supersensitive power of detecting the presence of deadly danger turned him away. So he passed Bush McTaggart's poisoned tidbits, sniffing them on the way, and leaving the story of his suspicion in the manner of his footprints in the snow. Where McTaggart had halted at midday to cook his dinner Baree made these same cautious circles with his feet.
He followed in the factor's snowshoe tracks, and in the third trap killed a rabbit. When he had finished with it nothing but the hair and crimson patches of blood lay upon the snow. Starved for many days, he was filled with a wolfish hunger, and before the day was over he had robbed the bait from a full dozen of McTaggart's traps.
Her heart died in her breast as she looked upon the swift and terrible change wrought by sudden death. Slowly Pierrot straightened. His eyes were wide for a moment wide and staring. He made no sound. She could not see his lips move. And then he fell toward her, so that McTaggart's body was free.
He was standing with his back against the door; and at Nepeese in her wonderful dress and flowing hair he was staring as if stunned for a space at what he saw. Fate, or accident, was playing against the Willow now. If there had been a spark of slumbering chivalry, of mercy, even, in Bush McTaggart's soul, it was extinguished by what he saw.
That would tickle Pierrot. And he would be alone with Nepeese while Pierrot was gone for the missioner. This thought flamed McTaggart's blood like strong whisky. There was no thought in his hot and unreasoning brain of what Nepeese might say of what she might think.
For ten days Gregson, the investigating agent, had been Bush McTaggart's guest at the Post, and twice in that time it had come into Marie's mind to creep upon him while he slept and kill him. The factor himself paid little attention to her now, a fact which would have made her happy if it had not been for Gregson.
He blew out a cloud of smoke from his pipe as he eyed Baree, and Baree, with his head between his forepaws, eyed him back. A week later Baree answered Carvel's question by swinging westward to give a wide berth to Post Lac Bain. It was midafternoon when they crossed the trail along which Bush McTaggart's traps and deadfalls had been set. Baree did not even pause.
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