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.