Two days later Le Beau saw where Miki had fought his fight with death in the snow and his heart was black with rage and disappointment.  He began to follow the footprints of the dog.  It was noon when he came to the windfall and saw the beaten path where Miki entered it.  On his knees he peered into the cavernous depths—­and saw nothing.  But Miki, lying watchfully, saw the man, and he was like the black, bearded monster who had almost killed him with a club a long time ago.  And in his heart, too, there was disappointment, for away back in his memory of things there was always the thought of Challoner—­the master he had lost; and it was never Challoner whom he found when he came upon the man smell.

Le Beau heard his growl, and the man’s blood leapt excitedly as he rose to his feet.  He could not go in after the wild dog, and he could not lure him out.  But there was another way.  He would drive him out with fire!

Deep back in his fortress, Miki heard the crunch of Le Beau’s feet in the snow.  A few minutes later he saw the man-beast again peering into his lair.

“Bete, Bete,” he called half tauntingly, and again Miki growled.

Jacques was satisfied.  The windfall was not more than thirty or forty feet in diameter, and about it the forest was open and clear of undergrowth.  It would be impossible for the wild dog to get away from his rifle.

A second time he went around the piled-up mass of fallen timber.  On three sides it was completely smothered under the deep snow.  Only where Miki’s trail entered was it open.

Getting the wind behind him Le Beau made his Iskoo of birch-bark and dry wood at the far end of the windfall.  The seasoned logs and tree-tops caught the fire like tinder, and within a few minutes the flames began to crackle and roar in a manner that made Miki wonder what was happening.  For a space the smoke did not reach him.  Le Beau, watching, with his rifle in his bare hands, did not for an instant let his eyes leave the spot where the wild dog must come out.

Suddenly a pungent whiff of smoke filled Miki’s nostrils, and a thin white cloud crept in a ghostly veil between him and the opening.  A crawling, snake-like rope of it began to pour between two logs within a yard of him, and with it the strange roaring grew nearer and more menacing.  Then, for the first time, he saw lightning flashes of yellow flame through the tangled debris as the fire ate into the heart of a mass of pitch-filled spruce.  In another ten seconds the flames leapt twenty feet into the air, and Jacques Le Beau stood with his rifle half to his shoulder, ready to kill.

Appalled by the danger that was upon him, Miki did not forget Le Beau.  With an instinct sharpened to fox-like keenness his mind leapt instantly to the truth of the matter.  It was the man-beast who had set this new enemy upon him; and out there, just beyond the opening, the man-beast was waiting.  So, like the fox, he did what Le Beau least expected.  He crawled back swiftly through the tangled tops until he came to the wall of snow that shut the windfall in, and through this he burrowed his way almost as quickly as the fox himself would have done it.  With his jaws he tore through the half-inch outer crust, and a moment later stood in the open, with the fire between him and Le Beau.