CHAPTER 25
The trap line of Pierre Eustach ran thirty miles straight west of LacBain. It was not as long a line as Pierrot's had been, but it was likea main artery running through the heart of a rich fur country. It hadbelonged to Pierre Eustach's father, and his grandfather, and hisgreat-grandfather, and beyond that it reached, Pierre averred, back tothe very pulse of the finest blood in France. The books at McTaggart'sPost went back only as far as the great-grandfather end of it, theolder evidence of ownership being at Churchill. It was the finest gamecountry between Reindeer Lake and the Barren Lands. It was in Decemberthat Baree came to it.
Again he was traveling southward in a slow and wandering fashion,seeking food in the deep snows. The Kistisew Kestin, or Great Storm,had come earlier than usual this winter, and for a week after itscarcely a hoof or claw was moving. Baree, unlike the other creatures,did not bury himself in the snow and wait for the skies to clear andcrust to form. He was big, and powerful, and restless. Less than twoyears old, he weighed a good eighty pounds. His pads were broad andwolfish. His chest and shoulders were like a Malemute's, heavy and yetmuscled for speed. He was wider between the eyes than the wolf-breedhusky, and his eyes were larger, and entirely clear of the Wuttooi, orblood film, that marks the wolf and also to an extent the husky. Hisjaws were like Kazan's, perhaps even more powerful.
Through all that week of the Big Storm he traveled without food. Therewere four days of snow, with driving blizzards and fierce winds, andafter that three days of intense cold in which every living creaturekept to its warm dugout in the snow. Even the birds had burrowedthemselves in. One might have walked on the backs of caribou and mooseand not have guessed it. Baree sheltered himself during the worst ofthe storm but did not allow the snow to gather over him.
Every trapper from Hudson's Bay to the country of the Athabasca knewthat after the Big Storm the famished fur animals would be seekingfood, and that traps and deadfalls properly set and baited stood thebiggest chance of the year of being filled. Some of them set out overtheir trap lines on the sixth day; some on the seventh, and others onthe eighth. It was on the seventh day that Bush McTaggart started overPierre Eustach's line, which was now his own for the season. It tookhim two days to uncover the traps, dig the snow from them, rebuild thefallen "trap houses," and rearrange the baits. On the third day he wasback at Lac Bain.
It was on this day that Baree came to the cabin at the far end ofMcTaggart's line. McTaggart's trail was fresh in the snow about thecabin, and the instant Baree sniffed of it every drop of blood in hisbody seemed to leap suddenly with a strange excitement. It took perhapshalf a minute for the scent that filled his nostrils to associateitself with what had gone before, and at the end of that half-minutethere rumbled in Baree's chest a deep and sullen growl. For manyminutes after that he stood like a black rock in the snow, watching thecabin.
Then slowly he began circling about it, drawing nearer and nearer,until at last he was sniffing at the threshold. No sound or smell oflife came from inside, but he could smell the old smell of McTaggart.Then he faced the wilderness--the direction in which the trap line ranback to Lac Bain. He was trembling. His muscles twitched. He whined.Pictures were assembling more and more vividly in his mind--the fightin the cabin, Nepeese, the wild chase through the snow to the chasm'sedge--even the memory of that age-old struggle when McTaggart hadcaught him in the rabbit snare. In his whine there was a greatyearning, almost expectation. Then it died slowly away. After all, thescent in the snow was of a thing that he had hated and wanted to kill,and not of anything that he had loved. For an instant nature hadimpressed on him the significance of associations--a brief space only,and then it was gone. The whine died away, but in its place came againthat ominous growl.
Slowly he followed the trail and a quarter of a mile from the cabinstruck the first trap on the line. Hunger had caved in his sides untilhe was like a starved wolf. In the first trap house McTaggart hadplaced as bait the hindquarter of a snowshoe rabbit. Baree reached incautiously. He had learned many things on Pierrot's line: he hadlearned what the snap of a trap meant. He had felt the cruel pain ofsteel jaws; he knew better than the shrewdest fox what a deadfall woulddo when the trigger was sprung--and Nepeese herself had taught him thathe was never to touch a poison bait. So he closed his teeth gently inthe rabbit flesh and drew it forth as cleverly as McTaggart himselfcould have done. He visited five traps before dark, and ate the fivebaits without springing a pan. The sixth was a deadfall. He circledabout this until he had beaten a path in the snow. Then he went on intoa warm balsam swamp and found himself a bed for the night.
The next day saw the beginning of the struggle that was to followbetween the wits of man and beast. To Baree the encroachment of BushMcTaggart's trap line was not war; it was existence. It was to furnishhim food, as Pierrot's line had furnished him food for many weeks. Buthe sensed the fact that in this instance he was lawbreaker and had anenemy to outwit. Had it been good hunting weather he might have goneon, for the unseen hand that was guiding his wanderings was drawing himslowly but surely back to the old beaver pond and the Gray Loon. As itwas, with the snow deep and soft under him--so deep that in places heplunged into it over his ears--McTaggart's trap line was like a trailof manna made for his special use.
He followed in the factor's snowshoe tracks, and in the third trapkilled a rabbit. When he had finished with it nothing but the hair andcrimson patches of blood lay upon the snow. Starved for many days, hewas filled with a wolfish hunger, and before the day was over he hadrobbed the bait from a full dozen of McTaggart's traps. Three times hestruck poison baits--venison or caribou fat in the heart of which was adose of strychnine, and each time his keen nostrils detected thedanger. Pierrot had more than once noted the amazing fact that Bareecould sense the presence of poison even when it was most skillfullyinjected into the frozen carcass of a deer. Foxes and wolves ate offlesh from which his supersensitive power of detecting the presence ofdeadly danger turned him away.
So he passed Bush McTaggart's poisoned tidbits, sniffing them on theway, and leaving the story of his suspicion in the manner of hisfootprints in the snow. Where McTaggart had halted at midday to cookhis dinner Baree made these same cautious circles with his feet.
The second day, being less hungry and more keenly alive to the hatedsmell of his enemy, Baree ate less but was more destructive. McTaggartwas not as skillful as Pierre Eustach in keeping the scent of his handsfrom the traps and "houses," and every now and then the smell of himwas strong in Baree's nose. This wrought in Baree a swift and definiteantagonism, a steadily increasing hatred where a few days before hatredwas almost forgotten.
There is, perhaps, in the animal mind a process of simple computationwhich does not quite achieve the distinction of reason, and which isnot altogether instinct, but which produces results that might beascribed to either. Baree did not add two and two together to makefour. He did not go back step by step to prove to himself that the manto whom this trap line belonged was the cause of all hit, griefs andtroubles--but he DID find himself possessed of a deep and yearninghatred. McTaggart was the one creature except the wolves that he hadever hated. It was McTaggart who had hurt him, McTaggart who had hurtPierrot, McTaggart who had made him lose his beloved Nepeese--ANDMcTAGGART WAS HERE ON THIS TRAP LINE! If he had been wandering before,without object or destiny, he was given a mission now. It was to keepto the traps. To feed himself. And to vent his hatred and his vengeanceas he lived.
The second day, in the center of a lake, he came upon the body of awolf that had died of one of the poison baits. For a half-hour hemauled the dead beast until its skin was torn into ribbons. He did nottaste the flesh. It was repugnant to him. It was his vengeance on thewolf breed. He stopped when he was half a dozen miles from Lac Bain,and turned back. At this particular point the line crossed a frozenstream beyond which was an open plain, and over that plain came--whenthe wind was right--the smoke and smell of the Post. The second nightBaree lay with a full stomach in a thicket of banksian pine; the th
irdday he was traveling westward over the trap line again.
Early on this morning Bush McTaggart started out to gather his catch,and where he crossed the stream six miles from Lac Bain he first sawBaree's tracks. He stopped to examine them with sudden and unusualinterest, falling at last on his knees, whipping off the glove from hisright hand, and picking up a single hair.
"The black wolf!"
He uttered the words in an odd, hard voice, and involuntarily his eyesturned straight in the direction of the Gray Loon. After that, evenmore carefully than before, he examined one of the clearly impressedtracks in the snow. When he rose to his feet there was in his face thelook of one who had made an unpleasant discovery.
"A black wolf!" he repeated, and shrugged his shoulders. "Bah! Lerue isa fool. It is a dog." And then, after a moment, he muttered in a voicescarcely louder than a whisper, "HER DOG."
He went on, traveling in the trail of the dog. A new excitementpossessed him that was more thrilling than the excitement of the hunt.Being human, it was his privilege to add two and two together, and outof two and two he made--Baree. There was little doubt in his mind. Thethought had flashed on him first when Lerue had mentioned the blackwolf. He was convinced after his examination of the tracks. They werethe tracks of a dog, and the dog was black. Then he came to the firsttrap that had been robbed of its bait.
Under his breath he cursed. The bait was gone, and the trap wasunsprung. The sharpened stick that had transfixed the bait was pulledout clean.
All that day Bush McTaggart followed a trail where Baree had lefttraces of his presence. Trap after trap he found robbed. On the lake hecame upon the mangled wolf. From the first disturbing excitement of hisdiscovery of Baree's presence his humor changed slowly to one of rage,and his rage increased as the day dragged out. He was not unacquaintedwith four-footed robbers of the trap line, but usually a wolf or a foxor a dog who had grown adept in thievery troubled only a few traps. Butin this case Baree was traveling straight from trap to trap, and hisfootprints in the snow showed that he had stopped at each one. Therewas, to McTaggart, almost a human devilishness to his work. He evadedthe poisons. Not once did he stretch his head or paw within the dangerzone of a deadfall. For apparently no reason whatever he had destroyeda splendid mink, whose glossy fur lay scattered in worthless bits overthe snow. Toward the end of the day McTaggart came to a deadfall inwhich a lynx had died. Baree had torn the silvery flank of the animaluntil the skin was of less than half value. McTaggart cursed aloud, andhis breath came hot.
At dusk he reached the shack Pierre Eustach had built midway of hisline, and took inventory of his fur. It was not more than a third of acatch; the lynx was half-ruined, a mink was torn completely in two. Thesecond day he found still greater ruin, still more barren traps. He waslike a madman. When he arrived at the second cabin, late in theafternoon, Baree's tracks were not an hour old in the snow. Three timesduring the night he heard the dog howling.
The third day McTaggart did not return to Lac Bain, but began acautious hunt for Baree. An inch or two of fresh snow had fallen, andas if to take even greater measure of vengeance from his man enemyBaree had left his footprints freely within a radius of a hundred yardsof the cabin. It was half an hour before McTaggart could pick out thestraight trail, and he followed it for two hours into a thick banksianswamp. Baree kept with the wind. Now and then he caught the scent ofhis pursuer. A dozen times he waited until the other was so close hecould hear the snap of brush, or the metallic click of twigs againsthis rifle barrel. And then, with a sudden inspiration that brought thecurses afresh to McTaggart's lips, he swung in a wide circle and cutstraight back for the trap line. When the factor reached the line,along toward noon, Baree had already begun his work. He had killed andeaten a rabbit. He had robbed three traps within the distance of amile, and he was headed again straight over the trap line for Post LacBain.
It was the fifth day that Bush McTaggart returned to his post. He wasin an ugly mood. Only Valence of the four Frenchmen was there, and itwas Valence who heard his story, and afterward heard him cursing Marie.She came into the store a little later, big-eyed and frightened, one ofher cheeks flaming red where McTaggart had struck her. While thestorekeeper was getting her the canned salmon McTaggart wanted for hisdinner Valence found the opportunity to whisper softly in her ear:
"M'sieu Lerue has trapped a silver fox," he said with low triumph. "Heloves you, cherie, and he will have a splendid catch by spring--andsends you this message from his cabin up on The Little Black Bear withNo Tail: BE READY TO FLY WHEN THE SOFT SNOWS COME!"
Marie did not look at him, but she heard, and her eyes shone so likestars when the young storekeeper gave her the salmon that he said toValence, when she had gone:
"Blue Death, but she is still beautiful at times. Valence!"
To which Valence nodded with an odd smile.