like a steel
trap on the man's calf and crunched down to the bone. Whereat the man
was determined to have his life, only Black Leclere, with ominous eyes
and naked hunting-knife, stepped in between. The killing of Batard--ah,
_sacredam_, _that_ was a pleasure Leclere reserved for himself. Some day
it would happen, or else--bah! who was to know? Anyway, the problem
would be solved.

For they had become problems to each other. The very breath each drew
was a challenge and a menace to the other. Their hate bound them
together as love could never bind. Leclere was bent on the coming of the
day when Batard should wilt in spirit and cringe and whimper at his feet.
And Batard--Leclere knew what was in Batard's mind, and more than once
had read it in Batard's eyes. And so clearly had he read, that when
Batard was at his back, he made it a point to glance often over his
shoulder.

Men marvelled when Leclere refused large money for the dog. "Some day
you'll kill him and be out his price," said John Hamlin once, when Batard
lay panting in the snow where Leclere had kicked him, and no one knew
whether his ribs were broken, and no one dared look to see.

"Dat," said Leclere, dryly, "dat is my biz'ness, _M'sieu_'."

And the men marvelled that Batard did not run away. They did not
understand. But Leclere understood. He was a man who lived much in the
open, beyond the sound of human tongue, and he had learned the voices of
wind and storm, the sigh of night, the whisper of dawn, the clash of day.
In a dim way he could hear the green things growing, the running of the
sap, the bursting of the bud. And he knew the subtle speech of the
things that moved, of the rabbit in the snare, the moody raven beating
the air with hollow wing, the baldface shuffling under the moon, the wolf
like a grey shadow gliding betwixt the twilight and the dark. And to him
Batard spoke clear and direct. Full well he understood why Batard did
not run away, and he looked more often over his shoulder.

When in anger, Batard was not nice to look upon, and more than once had
he leapt for Leclere's throat, to be stretched quivering and senseless in
the snow, by the butt of the ever ready dogwhip. And so Batard learned
to bide his time. When he reached his full strength and prime of youth,
he thought the time had come. He was broad-chested, powerfully muscled,
of far more than ordinary size, and his neck from head to shoulders was a
mass of bristl