His heart was fired by a vengeful anticipation as he hurried on through the glow of the early sun, with The Killer at his heels, led by a babiche thong.  Miki was nosing about the first trap-house as Netah and Le Beau entered the edge of the swamp, three miles to the east.

It was in this KEKEK that Miki had killed the fisher-cat the previous morning.  It was empty now.  Even the bait-peg was gone, and there was no sign of a trap.  A quarter of a mile farther on he came to a second trap-house, and this also was empty.  He was a bit puzzled.  And then he went on to the third house.  He stood for several minutes, sniffing the air still more suspiciously, before he drew close to it.  The man-tracks were thicker here.  The snow was beaten down with them, and the scent of Le Beau was so strong in the air that for a space Miki believed he was near.  Then he advanced so that he got a look into the door of the trap-house.  Squatted there, staring at him with big round eyes, was a huge snowshoe rabbit.  A premonition of danger held Miki back.  It was something in the attitude of Wapoos, the old rabbit.  He was not like the others he had caught along Le Beau’s line.  He was not struggling in a trap; he was not stretched out, half frozen, and he was not dangling at the end of a snare.  He was all furred up into a warm and comfortable looking ball.  As a matter of fact, Le Beau had caught him with his hands in a hollow log, and had tied him to the bait peg with a piece of buck-skin string; and after that, just out of Wapoos’s reach, he had set a nest of traps and covered them with snow.

Nearer and nearer to this menace drew Miki, in spite of the unaccountable impulse that warned him to keep back.  Wapoos, fascinated by his slow and deadly advance, made no movement, but sat as if frozen into stone.  Then Miki was at him.  His powerful jaws closed with a crunch.  In the same instant there came the angry snap of steel and a fisher-trap closed on one of his hind feet.  With a snarl he dropped Wapoos and turned upon it, snap—­ snap—­snap went three more of Jacques’s nest of traps.  Two of them missed.  The third caught him by a front paw.  As he had caught Wapoos, and as he had killed the fisher-cat, so now he seized this new and savage enemy between his jaws.  His fangs crunched on the cold steel; he literally tore it from his paw so that blood streamed forth and strained the snow red.  Madly he twisted himself to get at his hind foot.  On this foot the fisher-trap had secured a hold that was unbreakable.  He ground it between his jaws until the blood ran from his mouth.  He was fighting it when Le Beau came out from behind a clump of spruce twenty yards away with The Killer at his heels.

The Brute stopped.  He was panting, and his eyes were aflame.  Two hundred yards away he had heard the clinking of the trap-chain.

“Ow! he is there,” he gasped, tightening his hold on The Killer’s lead thong.  “He is there, Netah, you Red Eye!  That is the robber devil you are to kill—­almost.  I will unfasten you, and then—­go to!”