She obeyed, shrinking back with the baby in her arms. Miki saw the
change, and the greenish fire returned into his eyes when he caught
sight of Le Beau. A deep and wolfish snarl rose in his throat.

Le Beau turned on Nanette. The glow and the flush had not quite gone
from her eyes and cheeks as she stood with the baby hugged up to her
breast, and her big shining braid had fallen over her shoulder,
glistening with a velvety fire in the light that came through the
western window. But Le Beau saw nothing of this.

"If you make a POOS (a house-kitten) of that dog--a thing like you made
of Minoo, the breed-bitch, I will--"

He did not finish, but his huge hands were clinched, and there was an
ugly passion in his eyes. Nanette needed no more than that. She
understood. She had received many blows, but there was the memory of
one that never left her, night or day. Some day, if she could ever get
to Post Fort O' God, and had the courage, she would tell LE FACTEUR of
that blow--how Jacques Le Beau, her husband, struck it at the nursing
time, and her bosom was so hurt that the baby of two years ago had
died. She would tell it, when she knew she and the baby would be safe
from the vengeance of the Brute. And only LE FACTEUR--the Big Man at
Post Fort O' God a hundred miles away--was powerful enough to save her.

It was well that Le Beau did not read this thought in her mind now.
With his warning he turned to Miki and dragged him out of the cabin to
a cage made of saplings in which the winter before he had kept two live
foxes. A small chain ten feet in length he fastened around Miki's neck
and then to one of the sapling bars before he thrust his prisoner
inside the door of the prison and freed him by cutting the BABICHE
thongs with a knife.

For several minutes after that Miki lay still while the blood made its
way slowly through his numbed and half-frozen limbs. At last he
staggered to his feet, and then it was that Le Beau chuckled jubilantly
and turned back to the cabin.

And now followed many days that were days of hell and torment for
him--an unequal struggle between the power of The Brute and the spirit
of the Dog.

"I must break you--OW! by the Christ! I WILL break you!"--Le Beau would
say time and again when he came with the club and the whip. "I will
make you crawl to me--OUI, and when I say fight you will fight!"

It was a small cage, so small that Miki could not get away from the
reach of the club and the whip.