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