e Beau's line. He was not struggling in
a trap; he was not stretched out, half frozen, and he was not dangling
at the end of a snare. He was all furred up into a warm and comfortable
looking ball. As a matter of fact, Le Beau had caught him with his
hands in a hollow log, and had tied him to the bait peg with a piece of
buck-skin string; and after that, just out of Wapoos's reach, he had
set a nest of traps and covered them with snow.

Nearer and nearer to this menace drew Miki, in spite of the
unaccountable impulse that warned him to keep back. Wapoos, fascinated
by his slow and deadly advance, made no movement, but sat as if frozen
into stone. Then Miki was at him. His powerful jaws closed with a
crunch. In the same instant there came the angry snap of steel and a
fisher-trap closed on one of his hind feet. With a snarl he dropped
Wapoos and turned upon it, SNAP--SNAP--SNAP went three more of
Jacques's nest of traps. Two of them missed. The third caught him by a
front paw. As he had caught Wapoos, and as he had killed the
fisher-cat, so now he seized this new and savage enemy between his
jaws. His fangs crunched on the cold steel; he literally tore it from
his paw so that blood streamed forth and strained the snow red. Madly
he twisted himself to get at his hind foot. On this foot the
fisher-trap had secured a hold that was unbreakable. He ground it
between his jaws until the blood ran from his mouth. He was fighting it
when Le Beau came out from behind a clump of spruce twenty yards away
with The Killer at his heels.

The Brute stopped. He was panting, and his eyes were aflame. Two
hundred yards away he had heard the clinking of the trap-chain.

"OW! he is there," he gasped, tightening his hold on The Killer's lead
thong. "He is there, Netah, you Red Eye! That is the robber devil you
are to kill--almost. I will unfasten you, and then--GO TO!"

Miki, no longer fighting the trap, was eyeing them as they advanced. In
this moment of peril he felt no fear of the man. In his veins the hot
blood raged with a killing madness. The truth leapt upon him in a flash
of instinctive awakening. These two were his enemies instead of the
thing on his foot--the man-beast, and Netah, The Killer. He
remembered--as if it were yesterday. This was not the first time he had
seen a man with a club in his hand. And Le Beau held a club. But he was
not afraid. His steady eyes watched Netah. Unleashed by his master, The
Killer stood on stiff