The Wolver/Chapter 10
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Hard times were already in the wilderness when a rain began to fall in early February. French Louie remembered one or two such storms in the past. The rain was a sleet, not quite hail, nor yet soft rain. At first it fell noiselessly, in scattering drops, the wind whistling around and boring through the openings among the trees. It felt almost warm, and the trapper, struggling along in snow that crumpled under his feet, sweated and swore.
"By gar! Now a feller mos' freeze to death, an' now he bile like a tam stewpot, by gar!"
Little whiffs of steam swirled up around the trapper, and he likened himself to a team of horses after a race on the ice. He lamented that now he would not be good to eat, for, when an animal sweats, the meat sours.
He looked at his snow-shoes anxiously, for they loaded up with damp snow, and to their weight were added three or four weights of snow. He had to cut and carry a short club with which to tap the rim of the shoes, so as to jar off the snow. He tapped hard, and every tap bruised the rawhide along the rim, which was softened by the wet snow. He did not think of that at the moment, but he remembered it afterward.
French Louie had a great deal to think about in that lengthening way from his second wigwam to his third, for the miles that he covered were three times as difficult as in cold weather, when the snowshoes did not load. In the wet snow he sank much deeper than even in loose, newly fallen snow. He toiled on, slower and slower, the spring gone from his knees and the flow of words whispered under his breath.
"I am growin' old," he thought. "My muscles are stiff. A mile more, but it is dark, and my pack is heavy. By gar, I b'lieve I mus' res'!"
He would force himself to walk a hundred steps, and then he would stop in his tracks. The wigwam was just over the ridge ahead, and down in the swamp beyond. That last two-hundred-yard climb forced him to rest three times; but once over the top he could wallow and swing down the slope beyond, carried by gravity, and stumbling every rod or two. In the swamp he forced himself through, and fell upon the balsam boughs of his wigwam, so tired that he could only just breathe.
By and by he shed his pack, sat up, started a fire in the stone pit, and basked by the red warmth. Without exertion one soon chilled, though it was not very cold outside, for it was still raining. He put on a pail of water which he dipped out of the spring at the side of the wigwam. A handful of tea in the kettle boiled up into a stimulant, and a cupful of the brew revived the trapper's exhausted heart.
He broiled a slab of moose-meat over the fire, and ate it. Then, rolling up in his rabbit-skin blanket on the boughs, he slept like a bear all through the night, and long after breakfast-time and daylight in the morning.
When at last he awoke the woods were roaring and cracking. The rain that was falling clattered and buzzed. At intervals he heard the crash of a tree falling, near or far away. It seemed as if everything clicked and snapped or creaked stiffly, instead of the usual soft, sliding, purring sounds of the deep wilderness.
"By gar!" French Louie cried, springing up, and then stopping in mid effort, to swear at a crick in bis back, a cramp in both legs, and a sore place on each shoulder.
Having rubbed the hooked-up places, he straightened himself and crawled outdoors to look around. No sooner had he raised the flap of white birch-bark that served as a door than he saw what had happened.
A glare of ice was upon the snow. It was not an ordinary coat of crust, but a sheet of ice that grew thicker and thicker with each greaselike splash, as myriads of drops fell to the ground and congealed.
No wonder the trees cracked and groaned! No wonder the woods were full of squeaks and clatterings and breakings! Every limb drooped, and every tree-top bent under a crystal casing of sleet. The evergreen branches were bridged with ice, and the maples and birches were bending and shaking under an increasing burden of glassy armor.
The wilderness was quivering, so that everything was in a blur. At frequent intervals the fibers of weakling branches reached the limit of their strength, and with a crash they stripped down. Then a burdened tree would stagger up, having been lightened a little. A little later the same tree would be sagging again, over and over.
When some branches broke, they fell through other branches beneath them, and stripped all the limbs on that side of the tree to the ground. Then the ice on the other side would pull down the tree in that direction. Perhaps, half-way up, at some dead limb knot, the trunk would give way, and a jagged, yellow-splintered stub would stick up—soon to be festooned and fantastically frosted and coated with ice again—but damaged now beyond further injury! French Louie stared speechless at the spectacle that confronted his gaze. It was the most wonderful wilderness sight he remembered to have seen.
"By gar!" he whispered. "By gar! Dem poor moose an' wolfs an' rabbits an' birds—dey suffer now! Dey go hongry! By gar! One tam hard t'ing, dis sleet storm! By gar!"
His own wigwam was sagging under its burden, but a hot fire within soon thawed the under side of the sleet sheet, and the trapper scaled it down. He said a kind of orison over his fire, listening to the anguish of the green timber. Never had he heard a wilderness suffering so before. Never had he foreseen such anguish for all the creatures of the woods!
He sat over his fire, with his hands across his shins and his jaw on his knees, blinking silently for long stretches. He did not like this storm; its assault was too general, its cruelty too penetrating, its success too universal.
"Dem pore chickadee!" He shook his head. "Dem crossbill! Good t'ing dem chickaree lay up seed an' beechnut! All dem pa'tridge sleep in de snow, an' now dey never git out—dey die all starve to deat'! De rabbit, mebby, he fin' good birch down to eat! Mebby it get so hard beeg moose run aroun' an' not cut hees laig off. Dem pore owls! I bet dey get icicles on der tails an' horns, by gar!"
Still the rain-drops fell, and the wind scattered them across the trees and splashed them like stiffening grease upon the sleeted timber and glaring crust.
For two days and nights the storm continued unabated. Then the clouds swept by and the stars came out and twinkled in answer to the reflections of their own twinklings and glitterings among the icy tombs and catacombs of the troubled, groaning wilderness.
French Louie heard the storm kick itself out of the country, and he went out to see the clouds withdraw from the face of the sky. He saw the stars peeping through the holes. He retreated into his warm wigwam before the chill frost that fell upon the earth and polished the crystal mantle which draped the forest in a robe of death.
Dawn followed, and with dawn arrived a light wind. The breeze touched the timber and swayed the crystals back and forth. Crystal touched crystal, and the bells began to ring! Every limb was cased in ice, and the ice was like bell-metal—it was bell-metal! The crystal bells were ringing!
French Louie tumbled out of his wigwam and sprang to his feet, his eyes blinking and popping, hardly awake, when he heard the touch of the wind tuning up across the green timber, touching the long, slender hardwood branches, which bent down, every branch a bell, every bell a hammer for the wind to swing.
The old trapper glared with astonishment. He swore aloud, to make sure that this was not the music of his welcome into paradise. Seeing what he saw, he knew that what he heard was the knell of wilderness creatures. Unseen in all directions, incased in ice, death was gripping the tender birds and mammals.
The fisher, marten, lynx, wolves were in no present danger; but the animals upon which they depended for food were perishing that terrible day under the ice. Later, the ravenous flesh-eaters would swarm through the timber, suffering and growing gaunt.
The music was sweet, clear, beautiful. The wind was in a merry mood; its touch was soft and tender, and every bell rang as clear as the song of the hermit thrush, as the lay of the whitethroat!
Shivers of sheer rapture crept up and down the back of French Louie as he listened to those piping strains, themes for a thousand masterpieces, nor was it less beautiful for being the music to which the weaklings of the frozen glades were perishing. It was as if the grouse and rabbits touched the bells in passing.
French Louie, never quite sure where the real things of the wilderness crossed the borderland and became unreal, bent down and looked into the shades beneath the canopy of crystal. His eyes caught the glint of pure red, green, blue—all the colors, reflected by the eastern sun from crystal to crystal, till the last pure, beautiful spark darted up out of a dark recess in the undermost shade of the balsam swamp.
Those bells ringing and those lights flying shortened the old trapper's breath. A kind of ecstasy of wonder and fear silenced his jeering and brought to the surface the real reverence and love of which, despite his murderous business, he was capable.
During the day that followed he held to his wigwam. He could not venture forth in such a time as that, when every spirit was traveling and every fairy was dancing along, by day as well as by night. These were fairy hours in the sunshine, and a trapper would not care to be brought abroad by the spirits of the woods.
Nothing else seemed to be stirring, either. Not a bird appeared among the branches, not an animal showed itself upon the blue ice that covered the snow. Till wild life broke its way up into the world again it was no time for a human to stir abroad.
On the third night French Louie was awakened by a distant sound. He lay with one ear out of his rabbit-skin blanket, listening. Soon he sat up to listen the better. That was not enough, so he bounded up out of his warm bed and crawled outside of his wigwam, where the frost was snapping and the stars were sparkling.
He heard very plainly then. Away up to the north he heard the distant murmuring of loud voices. The sound approached nearer and nearer. It grew louder and louder, and became fiercer and fiercer. From other directions similar sounds seemed to be pouring into the main source and increasing the undertone. It was the running howl of the fiercest hunting-pack in the world—the long-drawn growl of gathering wolves, pouring by in a red-jawed, smoking-breathed torrent of famine need.
"Wolfs!" French Louie grimaced. "Hongry, starvin' wolfs! By gar! Dey have a loud yell for somet'ing to eat! Hi, hi, hi! Away dey go! French Louie see w'at dey do, down by Pukaso an' aroun'! Wen dey meet French Louie, dey gif a beeg yelp, by gar! Pore tam trapper! Dey bite heem in de ham, an' den dey swaller heem up, smoky chunk by smoky chunk! Dem fellers eat me up, an' my hide all full of de strychnin! Ain' dat a beeg joke? Den dey t'ink a trapper ees p'ison!