on his feet and had lunged at Le Beau.  The Frenchman was a master with the club.  All his life he had used it, and he brought it around in a sudden side-swing that landed with terrific force against Miki’s head.  The blood spurted from his mouth and nostrils.  He was dazed and half blinded.  He leapt again, and the club caught him once more.  He heard Le Beau’s ferocious cry of joy.  A third, a fourth, and a fifth time he went down under the club, and Le Beau no longer laughed, but swung his weapon with a look that was half fear in his eyes.  The sixth time the club missed, and Miki’s jaws closed against The Brute’s chest, ripping away the thick coat and shirt as if they had been of paper, and leaving on Le Beau’s skin a bleeding gash.  Ten inches more—­a little better vision in his blood-dimmed eyes—­and he would have reached the man’s throat.  A great cry rose out of Le Beau.  For an instant he felt the appalling nearness of death.

“Netah!  Netah!” he cried, and swung the club wildly.

Netah did not respond.  It may be that in this moment he sensed the fact that it was his master who had made him into a monster.  About him was the wilderness, opening its doors of freedom.  When Le Beau called again The Killer was slinking away, dripping blood as he went—­and this was the last that Le Beau saw of him.  Probably he joined the wolves, for The Killer was a quarter-strain wild.

Le Beau got no more than a glimpse of him as he disappeared.  His club-arm shot out again, a clean miss; and this time it was pure chance that saved him.  The trap-chain caught, and Miki fell back when his hot breath was almost at The Brute’s jugular.  He fell upon his side.  Before he could recover himself the club was pounding his head into the snow.  The world grew black.  He no longer had the power to move.  Lying as if dead he still heard over him the panting, exultant voice of the man-beast.  For Le Beau, black though his heart was, could not keep back a prayerful cry of thankfulness that he was victor—­and had missed death, though by a space no wider than the link of a chain.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Nanette, the woman, saw Jacques come out of the edge of the timber late in the afternoon, dragging something on the snow behind him.  In her heart, ever since her husband had begun to talk about him, she had kept secret to herself a pity for the wild dog.  Long before the last baby had come she had loved a dog.  It was this dog that had given her the only real affection she had known in the company of The Brute, and with barbarous cruelty Le Beau had driven it from her.  Nanette herself had encouraged it to seek freedom in the wilderness, as Netah had at last sought his.  Therefore she had prayed that the wild dog of the trapline might escape.

As Le Beau came nearer she saw that what he drew after him upon the snow was a sledge-drag made of four lengths of sapling, and when, a moment later, she looked down at its burden, she gave a little cry of horror.