He stopped at the next trap house and quickly set to work.  First he threw away the poisoned bait in the “house” and replaced it with the rabbit.  Then he began setting his wolf traps.  Three of these he placed close to the “door” of the house, through which Baree would have to reach for the bait.  The remaining nine he scattered at intervals of a foot or sixteen inches apart, so that when he was done a veritable cordon of traps guarded the house.  He did not fasten the chains, but let them lay loose in the snow.  If Baree got into one trap he would get into others and there would be no use of toggles.  His work done, McTaggart hurried on through the thickening twilight of winter night to his shack.  He was highly elated.  This time there could be no such thing as failure.  He had sprung every trap on his way from Lac Bain.  In none of those traps would Baree find anything to eat until he came to the “nest” of twelve wolf traps.

Seven inches of snow fell that night, and the whole world seemed turned into a wonderful white robe.  Like billows of feathers the snow clung to the trees and shrubs.  It gave tall white caps to the rocks, and underfoot it was so light that a cartridge dropped from the hand sank out of sight.  Baree was on the trap line early.  He was more cautious this morning, for there was no longer the scent or snowshoe track of McTaggart to guide him.  He struck the first trap about halfway between Lac Bain and the shack in which the factor was waiting.  It was sprung, and there was no bait.  Trap after trap he visited, and all of them he found sprung, and all without bait.  He sniffed the air suspiciously, striving vainly to catch the tang of smoke, a whiff of the man smell.

Along toward noon he came to the “nest”—­the twelve treacherous traps waiting for him with gaping jaws half a foot under the blanket of snow.  For a full minute he stood well outside the danger line, sniffing the air, and listening.  He saw the rabbit, and his jaws closed with a hungry click.  He moved a step nearer.  Still he was suspicious—­for some strange and inexplicable reason he sensed danger.  Anxiously he sought for it with his nose, his eyes, and his ears.  And all about him there was a great silence and a great peace.  His jaws clicked again.  He whined softly.  What was it stirring him?  Where was the danger he could neither see nor smell?  Slowly he circled about the trap house.  Three times he circled round it, each circle drawing him a little nearer—­until at last his feet almost touched the outer cordon of traps.  Another minute he stood still; his ears flattened; in spite of the rich aroma of the rabbit in his nostrils something was drawing him away.  In another moment he would have gone, but there came suddenly—­and from directly behind the trap house—­a fierce little ratlike squeak, and the next instant Baree saw an ermine whiter than the snow tearing hungrily at the flesh of the rabbit.  He forgot his strange premonition of danger.  He growled fiercely, but his plucky little rival did not budge from his feast.  And then he sprang straight into the “nest” that Bush McTaggart had made for him.