The Collected Works of James Oliver Curwood (Illustrated Edition). James Oliver Curwood
he had at last a very well-defined opinion of beaver play.
It may be that Umisk saw him. It may be that very soon the story of his adventure was known by all the inhabitants of Beaver Town. For when Baree came upon Umisk eating his supper of alder bark that evening, Umisk stood his ground to the last inch, and for the first time they smelled noses. At least Baree sniffed audibly, and plucky little Umisk sat like a rolled-up sphinx. That was the final cementing of their friendship—on Baree's part. He capered about extravagantly for a few moments, telling Umisk how much he liked him, and that they'd be great chums. Umisk didn't talk. He didn't make a move until he resumed his supper. But he was a companionable-looking little fellow, for all that, and Baree was happier than he had been since the day he left the old windfall.
This friendship, even though it outwardly appeared to be quite one-sided, was decidedly fortunate for Umisk. When Baree was at the pond, he always kept as near to Umisk as possible, when he could find him. One day he was lying in a patch of grass, half asleep, while Umisk busied himself in a clump of alder shoots a few yards away. It was the warning crack of a beaver tail that fully roused Baree; and then another and another, like pistol shots. He jumped up. Everywhere beavers were scurrying for the pond.
Just then Umisk came out of the alders and hurried as fast as his short, fat legs would carry him toward the water. He had almost reached the mud when a lightning flash of red passed before Baree's eyes in the afternoon sun, and in another instant Napakasew—the he-fox—had fastened his sharp fangs in Umisk's throat. Baree heard his little friend's agonized cry; he heard the frenzied flap-flap-flap of many tails—and his blood pounded suddenly with the thrill of excitement and rage.
As swiftly as the red fox himself, Baree darted to the rescue. He was as big and as heavy as the fox, and when he struck Napakasew, it was with a ferocious snarl that Pierrot might have heard on the farther side of the pond, and his teeth sank like knives into the shoulder of Umisk's assailant. The fox was of a breed of forest highwaymen which kills from behind. He was not a fighter when it came fang-to-fang, unless cornered—and so fierce and sudden was Baree's assault that Napakasew took to flight almost as quickly as he had begun his attack on Umisk.
Baree did not follow him, but went to Umisk, who lay half in the mud, whimpering and snuffling in a curious sort of way. Gently Baree nosed him, and after a moment or two Umisk got up on his webbed feet, while fully twenty or thirty beavers were making a tremendous fuss in the water near the shore.
After this the beaver pond seemed more than ever like home to Baree.
CHAPTER XI
While lovely Nepeese was still shuddering over her thrilling experience under the rock—while Pierrot still offered grateful thanks in his prayers for her deliverance and Baree was becoming more and more a fixture at the beaver pond—Bush McTaggart was perfecting a little scheme of his own up at Post Lac Bain, about forty miles north and west. McTaggart had been factor at Lac Bain for seven years. In the company's books down in Winnipeg he was counted a remarkably successful man. The expense of his post was below the average, and his semiannual report of furs always ranked among the first. After his name, kept on file in the main office, was one notation which said: "Gets more out of a dollar than any other man north of God's Lake."
The Indians knew why this was so. They called him Napao Wetikoo—the man-devil. This was under their breath—a name whispered sinisterly in the glow of tepee fires, or spoken softly where not even the winds might carry it to the ears of Bush McTaggart. They feared him; they hated him. They died of starvation and sickness, and the tighter Bush McTaggart clenched the fingers of his iron rule, the more meekly, it seemed to him, did they respond to his mastery. His was a small soul, hidden in the hulk of a brute, which rejoiced in power. And here—with the raw wilderness on four sides of him—his power knew no end. The big company was behind him. It had made him king of a domain in which there was little law except his own. And in return he gave back to the company bales and bundles of furs beyond their expectation. It was not for them to have suspicions. They were a thousand or more miles away—and dollars were what counted.
Gregson might have told. Gregson was the investigating agent of that district, who visited McTaggart once each year. He might have reported that the Indians called McTaggart Napao Wetikoo because he gave them only half price for their furs. He might have told the company quite plainly that he kept the people of the trap lines at the edge of starvation through every month of the winter, that he had them on their knees with his hands at their throats—putting the truth in a mild and pretty way—and that he always had a woman or a girl, Indian or half-breed, living with him at the Post. But Gregson enjoyed his visits too much at Lac Bain. Always he could count on two weeks of coarse pleasures. And in addition to that, his own womenfolk at home wore a rich treasure of fur that came to them from McTaggart.
One evening, a week after the adventure of Nepeese and Baree under the rock, McTaggart sat under the glow of an oil lamp in his "store." He had sent his little pippin-faced English clerk to bed, and he was alone. For six weeks there had been in him a great unrest. It was just six weeks ago that Pierrot had brought Nepeese on her first visit to Lac Bain since McTaggart had been factor there. She had taken his breath away. Since then he had been able to think of nothing but her. Twice in that six weeks he had gone down to Pierrot's cabin. Tomorrow he was going again. Marie, the slim Cree girl over in his cabin, he had forgotten—just as a dozen others before Marie had slipped out of his memory. It was Nepeese now. He had never seen anything quite so beautiful as Pierrot's girl.
Audibly he cursed Pierrot as he looked at a sheet of paper under his hand, on which for an hour or more he had been making notes out of worn and dusty company ledgers. It was Pierrot who stood in his way. Pierrot's father, according to those notes, had been a full-blooded Frenchman. Therefore Pierrot was half French, and Nepeese was quarter French—though she was so beautiful he could have sworn there was not more than a drop or two of Indian blood in her veins. If they had been all Indian—Chipewyan, Cree, Ojibway, Dog Rib—anything—there would have been no trouble at all in the matter. He would have bent them to his power, and Nepeese would have come to his cabin, as Marie had come six months ago. But there was the accursed French of it! Pierrot and Nepeese were different. And yet—
He smiled grimly, and his hands clenched tighter. After all, was not his power sufficient? Would even Pierrot dare stand up against that? If Pierrot objected, he would drive him from the country—from the trapping regions that had come down to him as heritage from father and grandfather, and even before their day. He would make of Pierrot a wanderer and an outcast, as he had made wanderers and outcasts of a score of others who had lost his favor. No other Post would sell to or buy from Pierrot if Le Bete—the black cross—was put after his name. That was his power—a law of the factors that had come down through the centuries. It was a tremendous power for evil. It had brought him Marie, the slim, dark-eyed Cree girl, who hated him—and who in spite of her hatred "kept house for him."
That was the polite way of explaining her presence if explanations were ever necessary. McTaggart looked again at the notes he had made on the sheet of paper. Pierrot's trapping country, his own property according to the common law of the wilderness, was very valuable. During the last seven years he had received an average of a thousand dollars a year for his furs, for McTaggart had been unable to cheat Pierrot quite as completely as he had cheated the Indians. A thousand dollars a year! Pierrot would think twice before he gave that up. McTaggart chuckled as he crumpled the paper in his hand and prepared to put out the light. Under his close-cropped beard his reddish face blazed with the fire that was in his blood. It was an unpleasant face—like iron, merciless, filled with the look that gave him his name of Napao Wetikoo. His eyes gleamed, and he drew a quick breath as he put out the light.
He chuckled again as he made his way through the darkness to the door. Nepeese as good as belonged to him. He, would have her if it cost—PIERROT'S LIFE. And—WHY NOT? It was all so easy. A shot on a lonely trap line, a single knife thrust—and who would know? Who would guess where Pierrot had gone? And it would all be Pierrot's fault. For the last time he had seen Pierrot, he had made an honest proposition: he would marry Nepeese. Yes,