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 specter, 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 and the humor 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 disappearance. 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 clung 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
out of sight. 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
ratlike 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.