o stop
and fight would be death, for behind he could hear the other wolves.
Ten seconds more and the chasm of the river yawned ahead of them.

At its very brink Miki swung and struck at Lightning. He sensed death
now, and in the face of death all his hatred turned upon the one beast
that had run at his side. In an instant they were down. Two yards from
the edge of the cliff, and Miki's jaws were at Lightning's throat when
the pack rushed upon them. They were swept onward. The earth flew out
from under their feet, and they were in space. Grimly Miki held to the
throat of his foe. Over and over they twisted in mid-air, and then came
a terrific shock. Lightning was under. Yet so great was the shock,
that, even though the wolf's huge body was under him like a cushion,
Miki was stunned and dazed. A minute passed before he staggered to his
feet. Lightning lay still, the life smashed out of him. A little beyond
him lay the bodies of two other wolves that in their wild rush had
swept over the cliff.

Miki looked up. Between him and the stars he could see the top of the
cliff, a vast distance above him. One after the other he smelled at the
bodies of the three dead wolves. Then he limped slowly along the base
of the cliff until he came to a fissure between two huge rocks. Into
this he crept and lay down, licking his wounds. After all there were
worse things in the world than Le Beau's trapline. Perhaps there were
even worse things than men.

After a time he stretched his great head out between his fore-paws, and
slowly the starlight grew dimmer, and the snow less white, and he slept.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

In a twist of Three Jackpine River, buried in the deep of the forest
between the Shamattawa country and Hudson Bay, was the cabin in which
lived Jacques Le Beau, the trapper. There was not another man in all
that wilderness who was the equal of Le Beau in wickedness--unless it
was Durant, who hunted foxes a hundred miles north, and who was
Jacques's rival in several things. A giant in size, with a heavy,
sullen face and eyes which seemed but half-hidden greenish loopholes
for the pitiless soul within him--if he had a soul at all--Le Beau was
a "throw-back" of the worst sort. In their shacks and teepees the
Indians whispered softly that all the devils of his forebears had
gathered in him.

It was a grim kind of fate that had given to Le Beau a wife. Had she
been a witch, an evil-doer and an evil-thinker like himself,