Baree, Son of Kazan Part 17

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.

CHAPTER 27

The next morning Bush McTaggart heard the clanking of a chain when he was still a good quarter of a mile from the "nest." Was it a lynx? Was it a fishercat? Was it a wolf or a fox? OR WAS IT BAREE? He half ran the rest of the distance, and it last he came to where he could see, and his heart leaped into his throat when he saw that he had caught his enemy. He approached, holding his rifle ready to fire if by any chance the dog should free himself.

Baree lay on his side, panting from exhaustion and quivering with pain.

A hoa.r.s.e cry of exultation burst from McTaggart's lips as he drew nearer and looked at the snow. It was packed hard for many feet about the trap house, where Baree had struggled, and it was red with blood.

The blood had come mostly from Baree's jaws. They were dripping now as he glared at his enemy. The steel jaws hidden under the snow had done their merciless work well. One of his forefeet was caught well up toward the first joint; both hind feet were caught. A fourth trap had closed on his flank, and in tearing the jaws loose he had pulled off a patch of skin half as big as McTaggart's hand. The snow told the story of his desperate fight all through the night. His bleeding jaws showed how vainly he had tried to break the imprisoning steel with his teeth.

He was panting. His eyes were bloodshot.

But even now, after all his hours of agony, neither his spirit nor his courage was broken. When he saw McTaggart he made a lunge to his feet, almost instantly crumpling down into the snow again. But his forefeet were braced. His head and chest remained up, and the snarl that came from his throat was tigerish in its ferocity. Here, at last--not more than a dozen feet from him--was the one thing in all the world that he hated more than he hated the wolf breed. And again he was helpless, as he had been helpless that other time in the rabbit snare.

The fierceness of his snarl did not disturb Bush McTaggart now. He saw how utterly the other was at his mercy, and with an exultant laugh he leaned his rifle against a tree, pulled oft his mittens, and began loading his pipe. This was the triumph he had looked forward to, the torture he had waited for. In his soul there was a hatred as deadly as Baree's, the hatred that a man might have for a man. He had expected to send a bullet through the dog. But this was better--to watch him dying by inches, to taunt him as he would have taunted a human, to walk about him so that he could hear the clank of the traps and see the fresh blood drip as Baree twisted his tortured legs and body to keep facing him. It was a splendid vengeance. He was so engrossed in it that he did not hear the approach of snowshoes behind him. It was a voice--a man's voice--that turned him round in his tracks.

The man was a stranger, and he was younger than McTaggart by ten years.

At least he looked no more than thirty-five or six, even with the short growth of blond beard he wore. He was of that sort that the average man would like at first glance; boyish, and yet a man; with clear eyes that looked out frankly from under the rim of his fur cap, a form lithe as an Indian's, and a face that did not bear the hard lines of the wilderness. Yet McTaggart knew before he had spoken that this man was of the wilderness, that he was heart and soul a part of it. His cap was of fisher skin. He wore a windproof coat of softly tanned caribou skin, belted at the waist with a long sash, and Indian fringed. The inside of the coat was furred. He was traveling on the long, slender bush country snowshoe. His pack, strapped over the shoulders, was small and compact; he was carrying his rifle in a cloth jacket. And from cap to snowshoes he was TRAVEL WORN. McTaggart, at a guess, would have said that he had traveled a thousand miles in the last few weeks. It was not this thought that sent the strange and chilling thrill up his back; but the sudden fear that in some strange way a whisper of the truth might have found its way down into the south--the truth of what had happened on the Gray Loon--and that this travel-worn stranger wore under his caribou-skin coat the badge of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. For that instant it was almost a terror that possessed him, and he stood mute.

The stranger had uttered only an amazed exclamation before. Now he said, with his eyes on Baree:

"G.o.d save us, but you've got the poor devil in a right proper mess, haven't you?"

There was something in the voice that rea.s.sured McTaggart. It was not a suspicious voice, and he saw that the stranger was more interested in the captured animal than in himself. He drew a deep breath.

"A trap robber," he said.

The stranger was staring still more closely at Baree. He thrust his gun stock downward in the snow and drew nearer to him.

"G.o.d save us again--a dog!" he exclaimed.

From behind, McTaggart was watching the man with the eyes of a ferret.

"Yes, a dog," he answered. "A wild dog, half wolf at least. He's robbed me of a thousand dollars' worth of fur this winter."

The stranger squatted himself before Baree, with his mittened hands resting on his knees, and his white teeth gleaming in a half smile.

"You poor devil!" he said sympathetically. "So you're a trap robber, eh? An outlaw? And--the police have got you! And--G.o.d save us once more--they haven't played you a very square game!"

He rose and faced McTaggart.

"I had to set a lot of traps like that," the factor apologized, his face reddening slightly under the steady gaze of the stranger's blue eyes. Suddenly his animus rose. "And he's going to die there, inch by inch. I'm going to let him starve, and rot in the traps, to pay for all he's done." He picked up his gun, and added, with his eyes on the stranger and his finger ready at the trigger, "I'm Bush McTaggart, the factor at Lac Bain. Are you bound that way, M'sieu?"

"A few miles. I'm bound upcountry--beyond the Barrens."

McTaggart felt again the strange thrill.

"Government?" he asked.

The stranger nodded.

"The--police, perhaps," persisted McTaggart.

"Why, yes--of course--the police," said the stranger, looking straight into the factor's eyes. "And now, m'sieu, as a very great courtesy to the Law I'm going to ask you to send a bullet through that beast's head before we go on. Will you? Or shall I?"

"It's the law of the line," said McTaggart, "to let a trap robber rot in the traps. And that beast was a devil. Listen--"

Swiftly, and yet leaving out none of the fine detail, he told of the weeks and months of strife between himself and Baree; of the maddening futility of all his tricks and schemes and the still more maddening cleverness of the beast he had at last succeeded in trapping.

"He was a devil--that clever," he cried fiercely when he had finished.

"And now--would you shoot him, or let him lie there and die by inches, as the devil should?"

The stranger was looking at Baree. His face was turned away from McTaggart. He said:

"I guess you are right. Let the devil rot. If you're heading for Lac Bain, m'sieu, I'll travel a short distance with you now. It will take a couple of miles to straighten out the line of my compa.s.s."

He picked up his gun. McTaggart led the way. At the end of half an hour the stranger stopped, and pointed north.

"Straight up there--a good five hundred miles," he said, speaking as lightly as though he would reach home that night. "I'll leave you here."

He made no offer to shake hands. But in going, he said:

"You might report that John Madison has pa.s.sed this way."

After that he traveled straight northward for half a mile through the deep forest. Then he swung westward for two miles, turned at a sharp angle into the south, and an hour after he had left McTaggart he was once more squatted on his heels almost within arms' reach of Baree.

And he was saying, as though speaking to a human companion:

"So that's what you've been, old boy. A trap robber, eh? An OUTLAW? And you beat him at the game for two months! And for that, because you're a better beast than he is, he wants to let you die here as slow as you can. An OUTLAW!" His voice broke into a pleasant laugh, the sort of laugh that warms one, even a beast. "That's funny. We ought to shake hands, Boy, by George, we had! You're a wild one, he says. Well, so am I. Told him my name was John Madison. It ain't. I'm Jim Carvel. And, oh Lord!--all I said was 'police.' And that was right. It ain't a lie. I'm wanted by the whole corporation--by every danged policeman between Hudson's Bay and the Mackenzie River. Shake, old man. We're in the same boat, an' I'm glad to meet you!"

CHAPTER 28

Jim Carvel held out his hand, and the snarl that was in Baree's throat died away. The man rose to his feet. He stood there, looking in the direction taken by Bush McTaggart, and chuckled in a curious, exultant sort of way.

There was friendliness even in that chuckle. There was friendliness in his eyes and in the shine of his teeth as he looked again at Baree.

About him there was something that seemed to make the gray day brighter, that seemed to warm the chill air--a strange something that radiated cheer and hope and comradeship just as a hot stove sends out the glow of heat. Baree felt it. For the first time since the two men had come his trap-torn body lost its tenseness; his back sagged; his teeth clicked as he shivered in his agony. To THIS man he betrayed his weakness. In his bloodshot eyes there was a hungering look as he watched Carvel--the self-confessed outlaw. And Jim Carvel again held out his hand--much nearer this time.

"You poor devil," he said, the smile going out of his face. "You poor devil!"

The words were like a caress to Baree--the first he had known since the loss of Nepeese and Pierrot. He dropped his head until his jaw lay flat in the snow. Carvel could see the blood dripping slowly from it.

"You poor devil!" he repeated.