Until the next to the last day Pierrot said nothing to Nepeese about what had passed between him and the factor at Lac Bain.  Then he told her.

“He is a beast—­a man-devil,” he said, when he had finished.  “I would rather see you out there—­with her—­dead.”  And he pointed to the tall spruce under which the princess mother lay.

Nepeese had not uttered a sound.  But her eyes had grown bigger and darker, and there was a flush in her cheeks which Pierrot had never seen there before.  She stood up when he had finished, and she seemed taller to him.  Never had she looked quite so much like a woman, and Pierrot’s eyes were deep-shadowed with fear and uneasiness as he watched her while she gazed off into the northwest—­toward Lac Bain.

She was wonderful, this slip of a girl-woman.  Her beauty troubled him.  He had seen the look in Bush McTaggart’s eyes.  He had heard the thrill in McTaggart’s voice.  He had caught the desire of a beast in McTaggart’s face.  It had frightened him at first.  But now—­he was not frightened.  He was uneasy, but his hands were clenched.  In his heart there was a smoldering fire.  At last Nepeese turned and came and sat down beside him again, at his feet.

“He is coming tomorrow, ma cherie,” he said.  “What shall I tell him?”

The Willow’s lips were red.  Her eyes shone.  But she did not look up at her father.

“Nothing, Nootawe—­except that you are to say to him that I am the one to whom he must come—­for what he seeks.”

Pierrot bent over and caught her smiling.  The sun went down.  His heart sank with it, like cold lead.

From Lac Bain to Pierrot’s cabin the trail cut within half a mile of the beaver pond, a dozen miles from where Pierrot lived.  And it was here, on a twist of the creek in which Wakayoo had caught fish for Baree, that Bush McTaggart made his camp for the night.  Only twenty miles of the journey could be made by canoe, and as McTaggart was traveling the last stretch afoot, his camp was a simple affair—­a few cut balsams, a light blanket, a small fire.  Before he prepared his supper, the factor drew a number of copper wire snares from his small pack and spent half an hour in setting them in rabbit runways.  This method of securing meat was far less arduous than carrying a gun in hot weather, and it was certain.  Half a dozen snares were good for at least three rabbits, and one of these three was sure to be young and tender enough for the frying pan.  After he had placed his snares McTaggart set a skillet of bacon over the coals and boiled his coffee.

Of all the odors of a camp, the smell of bacon reaches farthest in the forest.  It needs no wind.  It drifts on its own wings.  On a still night a fox will sniff it a mile away—­twice that far if the air is moving in the right direction.  It was this smell of bacon that came to Baree where he lay in his hollow on top of the beaver dam.