and he was anxious to learn how it had gone with her at the shack. The unknown, beast or demon, would feel the sting of his 30-30 in good time. He would now hurry home.
The husky at the shack howled a welcome to the sled-team, but when Marie opened the door Hertel knew from the look in her eyes that she, too, had heard the cries in the night.
"Oh, François!" she said weakly, and fell to sobbing in his arms.
It had been as he feared. Toward morning the whining dog had roused her. Opening the door, she heard the wail back on the ridge. The dog rushed savagely into the spruce, but was soon scratching at the door, badly frightened. Not until daylight, when the cries ceased, would the husky again leave the shack.
"Oh, ma cherie, she don' get scare' at one leetle lucivee dat shout lak de grand beeg somet'ing? I hear heem seeng down riviere. Eet ees not'ing."
In the end, Hertel convinced his wife that she had heard merely the customary shrieking of that great northern cat with tufted ears, the lynx.
But at heart the Frenchman was worried, for the length of his trap-lines compelled his frequent absence at night from the shack, and another shock like the last would reduce Marie to a state of mind forbidding his leaving her. It was clear that the brute must be hunted down and wiped out at once. No beast, Windigo, or devil should drive François Hertel out of free fur-country like a craven Cree. This valley
