In a twist of Three Jackpine River, buried in the deep of the forest
between the Shamattawa country and Hudson Bay, was the cabin in which
lived Jacques Le Beau, the trapper. There was not another man in all
that wilderness who was the equal of Le Beau in wickedness--unless it
was Durant, who hunted foxes a hundred miles north, and who was
Jacques's rival in several things. A giant in size, with a heavy,
sullen face and eyes which seemed but half-hidden greenish loopholes
for the pitiless soul within him--if he had a soul at all--Le Beau was
a "throw-back" of the worst sort. In their shacks and teepees the
Indians whispered softly that all the devils of his forebears had
gathered in him.
It was a grim kind of fate that had given to Le Beau a wife. Had she
been a witch, an evil-doer and an evil-thinker like himself, the thing
would not have been such an abortion of what should have been. But she
was not that. Sweet-faced, with something of unusual beauty still in
her pale cheeks and starving eyes--trembling at his approach and a
slave in his presence--she was, like his dogs, the PROPERTY of The
Brute. And the woman had a baby. One had already died; and it was the
thought that this one might die, as the other had died, that brought at
times the new flash of fire into her dark eyes.
"Le bon Dieu--I pray to the Blessed Angels--I swear you SHALL live!"
she would cry to it at times, hugging it close to her breast. And it
was at these times that the fire came into her eyes, and her pale
cheeks flushed with a smouldering bit of the flame that had once been
her beauty. "Some day--SOME DAY--"
But she never finished, even to the child, what was in her mind.
Sometimes her dreams were filled with visions. The world was still
young, and SHE was not old. She was thinking of that as she stood
before the cracked bit of mirror in the cabin, brushing out her hair,
that was black and shining and so long that it fell to her hips. Of her
beauty her hair had remained. It was defiant of The Brute. And deep
back in her eyes, and in her face, there were still the living, hidden
traces of her girlhood heritage ready to bloom again if Fate, mending
its error at last, would only take away forever the crushing presence
of the Master. She stood a little longer before the bit of glass when
she heard the crunching of footsteps in the snow outside.
Swiftly what had been in her face was gone. Le Beau had been away on
his trapline since yesterday, and his return filled her with the old
dread. Twice he had caught her before the mirror and had called her
vile names for wasting her time in admiring herself when she might have
been scraping the fat from his pelts. The second time he had sent her
reeling back against the wall, and had broken the mirror until the bit
she treasured now was not much larger than her two slim hands. She
would not be caught again. She ran with the glass to the place where
she kept it in hiding, and then quickly she wove the heavy strands of
her hair into a braid. The strange, dead look of fear and foreboding
closed like a veil over the secrets her eyes had disclosed to herself.
She turned, as she always turned in her woman's hope and yearning, to
greet him when he entered.
The Brute entered, a dark and surly monster. He was in a wicked humour.
His freshly caught furs he flung to the floor. He pointed to them, and
his eyes were narrowed to menacing slits as they fell upon her.
"He was there again--that devil!" he growled. "See, he has spoiled the
fisher, and he has cleaned out my baits and knocked down the
trap-houses. Par les mille cornes du diable, but I will kill him! I
have sworn to cut him into bits with a knife when I catch him--and
catch him I will, to-morrow. See to it there--the skins--when you have
got me something to eat. Mend the fisher where he is torn in two, and
cover the seam well with fat so that the agent over at the post will
not discover it is bad. Tonnerre de Dieu!--that brat! Why do you always
keep his squalling until I come in? Answer me, Bete!"
Such was his greeting. He flung his snowshoes into a corner, stamped
the snow off his feet, and got himself a fresh plug of black tobacco
from a shelf over the stove. Then he went out again, leaving the woman
with a cold tremble in her heart and the wan desolation of hopelessness
in her face as she set about getting him food.
From the cabin Le Beau went to his dog-pit, a corral of saplings with a
shelter-shack in the centre of it. It was The Brute's boast that he had
the fiercest pack of sledge-dogs between Hudson Bay and the Athabasca.
It was his chief quarrel with Durant, his rival farther north; and his
ambition was to breed a pup that would kill the fighting husky which
Durant brought down to the Post with him each winter at New Year. This
season he had chosen Netah ("The Killer") for the big fight at God's
Lake. On the day he would gamble his money and his reputation against
Durant's, his dog would be just one month under two years of age. It
was Netah he called from out of the pack now.
The dog slunk to him with a low growl in his throat, and for the first
time something like joy shone in Le Beau's face. He loved to hear that
growl. He loved to see the red and treacherous glow in Netah's eyes,
and hear the menacing click of his jaws. Whatever of nobility might
have been in Netah's blood had been clubbed out by the man. They were
alike, in that their souls were dead. And Netah, for a dog, was a
devil. For that reason Le Beau had chosen him to fight the big fight.
Le Beau looked down at him, and drew a deep breath of satisfaction.
"OW! but you are looking fine, Netah," he exulted. "I can almost see
running blood in those devil-eyes of yours; OUI--red blood that smells
and runs, as the blood of Durant's POOS shall run when you sink those
teeth in its jugular. And to-morrow we are going to give you the
test--such a beautiful test!--with the wild dog that is robbing my
traps and tearing my fishers into bits. For I will catch him, and you
shall fight him until he is almost dead; and then I shall cut his heart
out alive, as I have promised, and you will eat it while it is still
beating, so that there will be no excuse for your losing to that POOS
which M'sieu Durant will bring down. COMPRENEZ? It will be a beautiful
test--to-morrow. And if you fail I will kill you. OUI; if you so much
as let a whimper out of you, I will kill you--dead."