Ned hurried on, and in a few moments had dug out the great trap from its covering of snow. For a moment he actually doubted his power to set it. It was of obsolete type, mighty-springed, and its jaws were of a width forbidden by all laws of trapping in civilized lands, yet Ned did not doubt its efficiency. Its mighty irons had rusted; but not even a bear’s incalculable might could shatter them.
This was not to be a bait set, so his success depended upon the skill with which he concealed the trap. First he carefully refilled the excavation he had made in digging out the trap; then he dug a shallow hole in the snow in the narrowest part of the pass. Here he set the trap, utilizing all the power of his mighty muscles, and spread a light covering of snow above.
It was a delicate piece of work. Ned had no wish for the cruel jaws to snap shut as he was working above them. But his heart was in the venture, for all his hatred of the cruelty of the device; and he covered up his tracks with veteran’s skill. Then he quietly withdrew, retracing his steps and following the shore line toward the home cabin.
Surely the mighty strength that had set the powerful spring and the skill that covered up all traces of his work could succeed at last in freeing him from slavery.
Bess had reached the shelter first, and she was particularly relieved to see Ned’s tall form swinging toward her along the shore. Doomsdorf was in a particularly ominous mood to-night. The curious glitter in his magnetic eyes was more pronounced than she had ever seen it,—catlike in the shadows, steely in the lantern light; and his cruel savagery was just at the surface, ready to be wakened. Worst of all, the gaze he bent toward her was especially eager to-night, horrible to her as the cold touch of a reptile.
Every time she glanced up she found him regarding her, and he followed her with his eyes when she moved. Yet she dared not seek shelter in the new cabin, for the simple reason that she was afraid Doomsdorf would follow her there. Until Ned came, her defense was solely the presence of Lenore and the squaw.
There was no particular warmth in her meeting with Ned. Doomsdorf’s eyes were still upon her, and she was careful to keep any hint of the new understanding out of her face and eyes. Ned’s weather-beaten countenance was as expressionless as Sindy’s own.
He refused to be depressed, at once, by the air of suspense and impending disaster that hung over the cabin. Thus was the day of his home-coming—looked forward to throughout the bitter days of his trap line—and was not Lenore waiting, beautiful in the lantern light, for him to speak to her? Yet the old exultation was somehow missing to-night. His thoughts kept turning back to the pact he had made with Bess—to their dream of deliverance. What was more curious, Lenore’s lack of warmth that had come to be a matter of course in their weekly meetings almost failed to hurt. His mind was so busy with the problem of their freedom that he escaped the usual despondency that had crept upon him so many times before.
It was a peculiar paradox that while this was his day of days, the one day in five that seemed to justify his continued life, it was always the most hopeless and miserable, simply because of Lenore’s attitude toward him. It wasn’t entirely her failure to respond to his own ardor. The inevitable disappointment lay as much in his own attitude toward her. It was as much the things she did as those she failed to do that depressed him; the questions she asked, her patronage of Bess, her self-pitying complaints. Always he experienced a sense of some great omission,—perhaps only his failure to feel the old delight and exultation that the mere fact of her presence used to impart to him. He found it increasingly hard to give full attention to her; to let his eyes dwell always on her beauty and his ears give heed to her wrongs.