“Ze poleece,” he said.  “Ka, ze poleece—­like kam from Churchill an’ ze wolve keel!”

Philip’s hand was fumbling in his pocket.  The wolves were behind him and he dared not turn to look.  It was their ominous silence that filled him with dread.  They were waiting—­watching—­their animal instinct telling them that the command for which they yearned was already trembling on the thick lips of their master.  The revolver and the knife dropped from Bram’s hand.  He held only the whip and the club.

Philip drew forth the wallet.

“You lost something—­when you camped that night near Pierre Breault’s cabin,” he said, and his own voice seemed strange and thick to him.  “I’ve followed you—­to give it back.  I could have killed you if I had wanted to—­when I fired over your head.  But I wanted to stop you.  I wanted to give you—­this.”

He held out to Bram the golden snare.

CHAPTER VIII

It must have been fully half a minute that Bram stood like a living creature turned suddenly into dead stone.  His eyes had left Philip’s face and were fixed on the woven tress of shining hair.  For the first time his thick lips had fallen agape.  He did not seem to breathe.  At the end of the thirty seconds his hand unclenched from about the whip and the club and they fell into the snow.  Slowly, his eyes still fixed on the snare as if it held for him an overpowering fascination, he advanced a step, and then another, until he reached out and took from Philip the thing which he held.  He uttered no word.  But from his eyes there disappeared the greenish fire.  The lines in his heavy face softened and his thick lips lost some of their cruelty as he held up the snare before his eyes so that the light played on its sheen of gold.  It was then that Philip saw that which must have meant a smile in Bram’s face.

Still this strange man made no spoken sound as he coiled the silken thread around one of his great fingers and then placed it somewhere inside his coat.  He seemed, all at once, utterly oblivious of Philip’s presence.  He picked up the revolver, gazed heavily at it for a moment, and with a grunt which must have reflected his mental decision hurled it far out over the plain.  Instantly the wolves were after it in a mad rush.  The knife followed the revolver; and after that, as coolly as though breaking firewood, the giant went to Philip’s rifle, braced it across his knee, and with a single effort snapped the stock off close to the barrel.

“The devil!” growled Philip.

He felt a surge of anger rise in him, and for an instant the inclination to fling himself at Bram in the defense of his property.  If he had been helpless a few minutes before, he was utterly so now.  In the same breath it flashed upon him that Bram’s activity in the destruction of his weapons meant that his life was spared, at least for the present.  Otherwise Bram would not be taking these precautions.