The Wolver/Chapter 9
IX
French Louie grimaced and pranced around. Wolves had made to him the grand insult! Wolves had deprived him of the mere pittance upon which he depended for his little living! Worst of all, wolves had jeered at his skill as a trapper!
"By gar!" he swore roundly. "I feex dem fellers! By tam, I feex 'em!"
Accordingly, he began to play tricks upon the wolves. He left poison baits scattered around with a cunning appearance of carelessness. One of these was a fish caught in a fork where a springhole kept the water of the river open; and when he found the dead wolf, with the tracks of Two Toes scattered around the carcass, and gashes in the victim's hide, he leaped and pranced again.
"By gar!" he sang. "By gar! Dem fellers spoil dat good hide! By gar! Dey tear two dollaire out of dat hide! Dem sons of goons!"
He celebrated Christmas in his main cabin on Otter Cove. He cooked meat, birds, roots, and pastries. He went without his breakfast, in order to have a better appetite for dinner. He smoked his pipe only once during the morning, in order to enjoy his after-dinner smoke the more keenly.
He brought out a bottle of wine, which he had in his root-cellar, and danced an Indian corn-dance around the table, chanting the song of his own joy of life. He went out to his fur-house, and looked at the hides that he had hung up there. He pointed his finger at a red squirrel, and chattered at him so long that the squirrel fairly screeched with indignation. Then French Louie laughed and tossed the "leetle feller" a handful of crackers, saying:
"Dat feller need de Chris'mas, too, by gar!"
Chickadees dropped down out of the neighboring evergreens and perched on his cap, his shoulders, and his fingers. French Louie's fingers were not so different from the bark of tree-limbs in color and roughness.
All that bright, cold day he rested and committed himself to the spirit of the hour. Around his main camp little was ever disturbed. White hares fed on the peelings from his roots and apples. Mice and flying squirrels coursed through his cabin, robbing him of the crumbs on his table. He would search, swearing quaint Gallic oaths, for the holes by which they entered, but for some reason he would fail to find the holes.
When a white weasel added the cabin to his runway, when mice rained squeaking out of the roof, or the weasel darted its evil little head into the room, its beady eyes shining in the red lights from the stove, French Louie would swear and quiver and exclaim—but not loud enough really to alarm the little visitor. Even a porcupine, best of bait for a fisher, would gnaw and grunt and claw at the log where the trapper emptied out his salty dish-water, and perchance dropped a handful of salt by accident—though French Louie swore to the heavens that it was not his intention to give the porcupine and rabbits the salt that they craved.
"By gar! Dat quill-pig, he insult me! By gar! He come an' insult me by my own door!" the trapper yelled. "He make me de gran' insult! I feex him! Me French Louie, de trap-man, an' he come right up here! By gar! I make de fisher-bait of dat feller! I feex heem! I set de trap, I put out de p'ison, I make de cunnin' snare—I feex dat feller of a quill-pig! By gar!"
By all his forest gods he swore that he would do it, but the porcupine continued to gnaw away at the log and grunt, awakening French Louie at midnight, so that he could not go to sleep again for as much as five minutes or so.
At his line wigwams he told himself that the woods creatures would drive him out of house and home. In one cabin a big white owl perched itself near the peak, on a cross brace-bar, finding entrance through the smoke-hole. French Louie looked at the bird with real astonishment.
"By gar!" he whispered, as the owl leaned over and began to click its bill like a parrot. "By gar! You son of a goon! By gar! Yo' tak' my wigwam, an' I sleep out in de cold, by gar! I bet you bring de bad luck on me eef I don' treat you right, eh? By gar!"
When he first crawled into the wigwam French Louie had been tired, hungry, and in a hurry to go to sleep. Seeing the bird against the smoke-hole, he froze where he crawled, talking softly to the big owl. He backed out and poked a dead white rabbit into the opening; and instantly the bird dived down to seize it.
"By gar!" French Louie grunted. "Dat feller eat up my bait! I am helpless! By gar! Dat tam feller!"
Nevertheless, when the bird had the rabbit up on its perch and was contentedly picking oat the soft spots, he entered with great caution, swearing at the owl in the most gentle and soothing of tones.
"By gar!" he told the visitor, "I must have a fire, I must! I won't, be driven out by no tam white owl!"
He did build a fire, of the driest sticks he had, so that there would be no smoke. The owl took turns in cursing French Louie for the uprising stream of hot air, eating the rabbit, and walking sidewise on its perch to find the place of least disturbance.
At the camp where Two Toes tore down the game-pole an which French Louie had hung bait and meat, the old trapper cursed wolves up and down for hours. He declared that he would poison all the meat in the woods.. He affirmed that he would never, never leave a camp without a double line of traps and double doses of poison in every morsel of meat; but he did nothing of the kind. He hung up the same pole, hunted half a day to get more meat to hang on it, and left it as free as it had been before.
"I one big tam fool!" he cursed himself. "By gar! I forgot to set dem traps, put in dat p'ison! Some tam Two Toes come along now an' eat up all my meat! By gar! Come right up to my house an' home an' eat me out! By gar! I feex dem! I make a deadfall, a snare in my wigwam, dat's what I'll do. Tam quill-pig, tam white owl, tam old weasel insult me! By gar! I go to de city, nex'! I go where dey shovel de sidewalk an' don' wear snow-shoe! Dat what I do, by gar! Tam live stock drive me out'n de woods!"
French Louie's traps were set half a mile from his main and line cabins. Beyond that distance he placed his temptations and allayed the suspicions of his victims with all the deadly and almost unerring skill at his command.
He worked against the Swallow River pack of wolves, and followed up their tracks till he knew all the individuals by the shape of their paws and the drag or set of their footprints. He knew when one of the Pukaso wolves quit his pack and crossed over to the Twin Falls pack. He yelped with interest and excitement when, first he discovered the footprint of Knock Knee in the trail of Two Toes.
"By gar!" he gasped. "Ain' dat one funny t'ing? Wat a feller do about dat? By gar! I feex dem fellers!"
When the snow became too deep for comfortable walking, French Louie put on the light snow-shoes which he carried; as soon as danger of deep snow was indicated by the almanac. He carried a leather pack by a tump-line over his forehead and shoulder-straps. When he was hunting, he could slip the tump-line and turn his head any way he wished, though in straight away packing he carried the weight on his forehead.
He glided through the woods, walking with springing, graceful steps. Over his trail, or through fair timber, he touched nothing as he curved along among the tree-trunks. He could still-hunt on his snow-shoes, which he kept soft, so that they would not creak.
He saw many animals as he traveled. He shot a fisher or two every round of his traps. He killed a good many foxes, including one coal-black one which he struck in the ear with a twenty-two-long bullet. Every day he saw a moose or two, and sometimes, in a yard, he met a dozen.
Snow-storms alternated with bright, sunny days, but the winter grew steadily colder. The animals that French Louie found in his traps had less and less fat on them. The grouse tasted of balsam and were no longer good to eat. The rabbits grew rapidly scarcer, for their kind now furnished almost the only food for many birds and beasts—owls and foxes, wolves, fisher, marten, and lynx. The snow displayed a thousand tragedies.
French Louie followed up the places where wolves chased moose across his trap-lines. He looked at the moose, and shook his head as he saw the hair of the animals growing long and their bones showing plainer and plainer "on the points."