cause.  In self-defense he had killed him.  Was he not the Factor of Lac Bain?  Would not the company and the law believe his word before that of this girl?  His brain leaped with the old exultation.  It would never come to that—­to a betrayal of this struggle and death in the cabin—­after he had finished with her!  She would not be known for all time as La Bete Noir.  No, they would bury Pierrot, and she would return to Lac Bain with him.  If she had been helpless before, she was ten times more helpless now.  She would never tell of what had happened in the cabin.

He forgot the presence of death as he looked at her, bowed over her father so that her hair covered him like a silken-shroud.  He replaced the pistol in its holster and drew a deep breath into his lungs.  He was still a little unsteady on his feet, but his face was again the face of a devil.  He took a step, and it was then there came a sound to rouse the girl.  In the shadow of the farther wall Baree had struggled to his haunches, and now he growled.

Slowly Nepeese lifted her head.  A power which she could not resist drew her eyes up until she was looking into the face of Bush McTaggart.  She had almost lost consciousness of his presence.  Her senses were cold and deadened—­it was as if her own heart had stopped beating along with Pierrot’s.  What she saw in the factor’s face dragged her out of the numbness of her grief back into the shadow of her own peril.  He was standing over her.  In his face there was no pity, nothing of horror at what he had done—­only an insane exultation as he looked—­not at Pierrot’s dead body, but at her.  He put out a hand, and it rested on her head.  She felt his thick fingers crumpling her hair, and his eyes blazed like embers of fire behind watery films.  She struggled to rise, but with his hands at her hair he held her down.

“Great God!” she breathed.

She uttered no other words, no plea for mercy, no other sound but a dry, hopeless sob.  In that moment neither of them heard or saw Baree.  Twice in crossing the cabin his hindquarters had sagged to the floor.  Now he was close to McTaggart.  He wanted to give a single lunge to the man-brute’s back and snap his thick neck as he would have broken a caribou bone.  But he had no strength.  He was still partially paralyzed from his foreshoulder back.  But his jaws were like iron, and they closed savagely on McTaggart’s leg.

With a yell of pain the factor released his hold on the Willow, and she staggered to her feet.  For a precious half-minute she was free, and as the factor kicked and struck to loose Baree’s hold, she ran to the cabin door and out into the day.  The cold air struck her face.  It filled her lungs with new strength; and without thought of where hope might lie she ran through the snow into the forest.