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
b