By the middle of January the war between Baree and Bush McTaggart had
become more than an incident—more than a passing adventure to the beast,
and more than an irritating happening to the man. It was, for the time,
the elemental _raison d’etre_ of their lives. Baree hung to the
trap-line. He haunted it like a devastating spectre, and each time that
he sniffed afresh the scent of the Factor from Lac Bain he was impressed
still more strongly with the instinct that he was avenging himself upon
a deadly enemy. Again and again he outwitted McTaggart; he continued to
strip his traps of their bait; the humour grew in him more strongly to
destroy the fur he came across; 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. That first Great Loneliness—the
loneliness of the long days and longer nights of his waiting and seeking
on the Gray Loon, oppressed him again as it had oppressed him in the
early days of her loss. On starry or moonlit nights he sent forth his
wailing cries for her again, and Bush McTaggart, listening to them in
the middle of the night, felt strange shivers run up his spine.
The man’s hatred was different than the beast’s, but perhaps even more
implacable. With McTaggart it was not hatred alone. There was mixed with
it an indefinable and superstitious fear, a thing he laughed at, a thing
he cursed at, but which clung to him as surely as the scent of his trail
clung to Baree’s nose. Baree no longer stood for the animal alone; _he
stood for Nepeese_. That was the thought that insisted in growing in
McTaggart’s ugly mind. Never a day passed now that he did not think of
the Willow; never a night came and went without a visioning of her face.
He even fancied, on a certain night of storm, that he heard her voice
out in the wailing of the wind—and less than a minute later he heard
faintly a distant howl out in the forest. That night his heart was
filled with a leaden dread. He shook himself. He smoked his pipe until
the cabin was blue. He cursed Baree, and the storm—but there was no
longer in him the bullying courage of old. He had not ceased to hate
Baree; he still hated him as he had never hated a man, but he had an
even greater reason now for wanting to kill him. It came to him first in
his sleep, in a restless dream, and after that it lived, and lived—_the
thought that the spirit of Nepeese was guiding Baree in the ravaging of
his trap-line_!
After a time he ceased to talk at the Post about the Black Wolf that was
robbing his line. The furs damaged by Baree’s teeth he kept out of
sight, and to himself he kept his secret. He learned every trick and
scheme of the hunters who killed foxes and wolves along the Barrens. He
tried three different poisons, one so powerful that a single drop of it
meant death; he tried strychnine in gelatin capsules, in deer fat,
caribou fat, moose liver, and even in the flesh of porcupine. At last,
in preparing his poisons, he dipped his hands in beaver oil before he
handled the venoms and flesh so that there could be no human smell.
Foxes, wolves, and even the mink and ermine died of these baits, but
Baree came always so near—and no nearer. In January McTaggart poisoned
every bait in his trap-houses. This produced at least one good result
for him. From that day Baree no longer touched his baits, but ate only
the rabbits he killed in the traps.
It was in January that McTaggart caught his first glimpse of Baree. He
had placed his rifle against a tree, and was a dozen feet away from it
at the time. It was as if Baree knew, and had come to taunt him; for
when the Factor suddenly looked up Baree was standing out clear from the
dwarf spruce not twenty yards away from him, his white fangs gleaming
and his eyes burning like coals. For a space McTaggart stared as if
turned into stone. It was Baree. He recognized the white star, the
white-tipped ear, and his heart thumped like a hammer in his breast.
Very slowly he began to creep toward his rifle. His hand was reaching
for it when like a flash Baree was gone.
This gave McTaggart his new idea. He blazed himself a fresh trail
through the forests parallel with his trap-line but at least five
hundred yards distant from it. Wherever a trap or deadfall was set this
new trail struck sharply in, like the point of a V, so that he could
approach his line unobserved. By this strategy he believed that in time
he was sure of getting a shot at the dog. Again it was the man who was
reasoning, and again it was the man who was defeated. The first day that
McTaggart followed his new trail Baree also struck that trail. For a
little while it puzzled him. Three times he cut back and forth between
the old and the new trail. Then there was no doubt. The new trail was
the _fresh_ trail, and he followed in the footsteps of the Factor from
Lac Bain. McTaggart did not know what was happening until his return
trip, when he saw the story told in the snow. Baree had visited each
trap, and without exception he had approached each time at the point of
the inverted V. After a week of futile hunting, of lying in wait, of
approaching at every point of the wind—a period during which McTaggart
had twenty times cursed himself into fits of madness, another idea came
to him. It was like an inspiration, and so simple that it seemed almost
inconceivable that he had not thought of it before.
He hurried back to Post Lac Bain.
The second day after he was on the trail at dawn. This time he carried a
pack in which there were a dozen strong wolf traps freshly dipped in
beaver oil, and a rabbit which he had snared the previous night. Now and
then he looked anxiously at the sky. It was clear until late in the
afternoon, when banks of dark clouds began rolling up from the east.
Half an hour later a few flakes of snow began falling. McTaggart let one
of these drop on the back of his mittened hand, and examined it closely.
It was soft and downy, and he gave vent to his satisfaction. It was what
he wanted. Before morning there would be six inches of freshly fallen
snow covering the trails.
He stopped at the next trap-house and quickly set to work. First he
threw away the poisoned bait in the “house” and replaced it with the
rabbit. Then he began setting his wolf traps. Three of these he placed
close to the “door” of the house, through which Baree would have to
reach for the bait. The remaining nine he scattered at intervals of a
foot or sixteen inches apart, so that when he was done a veritable
cordon of traps guarded the house. He did not fasten the chains, but let
them lay loose in the snow. If Baree got into one trap he would get into
others and there would be no use of toggles. His work done, McTaggart
hurried on through the thickening twilight of winter night to his shack.
He was highly elated. This time there could be no such thing as failure.
He had sprung every trap on his way from Lac Bain. In none of those
traps would Baree find anything to eat until he came to the “nest” of
twelve wolf traps.
Seven inches of snow fell that night, and the whole world seemed turned
into a wonderful white robe. Like billows of feathers the snow hung to
the trees and shrubs; it gave tall white caps to the rocks, and
underfoot it was so light that a cartridge dropped from the hand sank to
the bottom of it. Baree was on the trap-line early. He was more cautious
this morning, for there was no longer the scent or snowshoe track of
McTaggart to guide him. He struck the first trap about halfway between
Lac Bain and the shack in which the Factor was waiting. It was sprung,
and there was no bait. Trap after trap he visited, and all of them he
found sprung, and all without bait. He sniffed the air suspiciously,
striving vainly to catch the tang of smoke, a whiff of the man-smell.
Along toward noon he came to the “nest”—the twelve treacherous traps
waiting for him with gaping jaws half a foot under the blanket of snow.
For a full minute he stood well outside the danger line, sniffing the
air, and listening. He saw the rabbit, and his jaws closed with a hungry
click. He moved a step nearer. Still he was suspicious—for some strange
and inexplicable reason he sensed danger. Anxiously he sought for it
with his nose, his eyes, and his ears. And all about him there was a
great silence and a great peace. His jaws clicked again. He whined
softly. What was it stirring him? Where was the danger he could neither
see nor smell? Slowly he circled about the trap-house; three times he
circled round it, each circle drawing him a little nearer—until at last
his feet almost touched the outer cordon of traps. Another minute he
stood still; his ears flattened; in spite of the rich aroma of the
rabbit in his nostrils _something was drawing him away_. In another
moment he would have gone, but there came suddenly—and from directly
behind the trap-house—a fierce little rat-like squeak, and the next
instant Baree saw an ermine whiter than the snow tearing hungrily at the
flesh of the rabbit. He forgot his strange premonition of danger. He
growled fiercely, but his plucky little rival did not budge from his
feast.
And then he sprang straight into the “nest” that Bush McTaggart had made
for him.