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Page 29
Wapoos, the rabbit, had run his furry head into the snare, and his
first frightened jump had "shot" the sapling to which the copper wire
was attached so that he was now hung half in mid-air, with only his
hind feet touching the ground. And there he was dancing madly while the
noose about his neck slowly choked him to death.
Baree gave a sort of gasp. He could understand nothing of the part that
the wire and the sapling were playing in this curious game. All he
could see was that Wapoos was hopping and dancing about on his hind
legs in a most puzzling and unrabbitlike fashion. It may be that he
thought it some sort of play. In this instance, however, he did not
regard Wapoos as he had looked on Umisk the beaver. He knew that Wapoos
made mighty fine eating, and after another moment or two of hesitation
he darted upon his prey.
Wapoos, half gone already, made almost no struggle, and in the glow of
the stars Baree finished him, and for half an hour afterward he feasted.
McTaggart had heard no sound, for the snare into which Wapoos had run
his head was the one set farthest from his camp. Beside the smoldering
coals of his fire he sat with his back to a tree, smoking his black
pipe and dreaming covetously of Nepeese, while Baree continued his
night wandering. Baree no longer had the desire to hunt. He was too
full. But he nosed in and out of the starlit spaces, enjoying immensely
the stillness and the golden glow of the night. He was following a
rabbit-run when he came to a place where two fallen logs left a trail
no wider than his body. He squeezed through; something tightened about
his neck. There was a sudden snap--a swish as the sapling was released
from its "trigger"--and Baree was jerked off his feet so suddenly that
he had no time to conjecture as to what was happening.
The yelp in his throat died in a gurgle, and the next moment he was
going through the pantomimic actions of Wapoos, who was having his
vengeance inside him. For the life of him Baree could not keep from
dancing about, while the wire grew tighter and tighter about his neck.
When he snapped at the wire and flung the weight of his body to the
ground, the sapling would bend obligingly, and then--in its
rebound--would yank him for an instant completely off the earth.
Furiously he struggled. It was a miracle that the fine wire held him.
In a few moments more it must have broken--but McTaggart had heard him!
The factor caught up his blanket and a heavy stick as he hurried toward
the snare. It was not a rabbit making those sounds--he knew that.
Perhaps a fishercat--a lynx, a fox, a young wolf--
It was the wolf he thought of first when he saw Baree at the end of the
wire. He dropped the blanket and raised the club. If there had been
clouds overhead, or the stars had been less brilliant, Baree would have
died as surely as Wapoos had died. With the club raised over his head
McTaggart saw in time the white star, the white-tipped ear, and the jet
black of Baree's coat.
With a swift movement he exchanged the club for the blanket.
In that hour, could McTaggart have looked ahead to the days that were
to come, he would have used the club. Could he have foreseen the great
tragedy in which Baree was to play a vital part, wrecking his hopes and
destroying his world, he would have beaten him to a pulp there under
the light of the stars. And Baree, could he have foreseen what was to
happen between this brute with a white skin and the most beautiful
thing in the forests, would have fought even more bitterly before he
surrendered himself to the smothering embrace of the factor's blanket.
On this night Fate had played a strange hand for them both, and only
that Fate, and perhaps the stars above, held a knowledge of what its
outcome was to be.
CHAPTER 12
Half an hour later Bush McTaggart's fire was burning brightly again. In
the glow of it Baree lay trussed up like an Indian papoose, tied into a
balloon-shaped ball with babiche thong, his head alone showing where
his captor had cut a hole for it in the blanket. He was hopelessly
caught--so closely imprisoned in the blanket that he could scarcely
move a muscle of his body. A few feet away from him McTaggart was
bathing a bleeding hand in a basin of water. There was also a red
streak down the side of McTaggart's bullish neck.
"You little devil!" he snarled at Baree. "You little devil!"
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