Toilers of the Trails/The Valley of the Windigo
THE VALLEY OF THE WINDIGO
François Hertel, outlaw, grounded his canoe on the sand beach at Ptarmigan Lake House, leaped into the water, and swung the woman in the bow to the shore. Leaving her to hold off with a whip the threatening post huskies from his own two dogs snarling defiance from the canoe, he went up to the trade-house. Entering the whitewashed log store, the tall Frenchman found Campbell, the factor, alone.
"Bon jour!" said Hertel, shaking hands.
"Good day!" coldly returned the Scotchman, eyeing the stranger with frankly curious gaze, for French trappers were rare so far north as the Ptarmigan Lake country. When Hertel offered Canadian paper money in payment for tea, sugar, and flour, the factor's interest was further aroused.
"You've come far," suggested Campbell, fingering the bill Hertel handed him.
"Yes, we travel sence June."
"Where are you headin'?"
"I t'ink I traverse dees countree for trappin'-groun'."
"Oh!" The thick eyebrows of Campbell rose.
"Ever travel this country before?"
"No, I alway' hunt de Height-of-Land countree. Saint M'rees water."
"What brought you so far north, then?" the factor quickly demanded, believing that he knew why this stranger had journeyed to the James Bay watershed, for in his desk lay a letter six months old warning the northern posts to keep a lookout for one François Hertel, wanted for murder at Coocoocache, on the Saint Maurice.
François Hertel shrugged his wide shoulders, looking Campbell fair in the eyes.
"I keel a man las' year at Coocoocache," he said quietly.
"You are François Hertel?" asked the factor, amazed at the admission.
"Yes, I keel de man who burn de cabane and tak' ma wife. Dey hunt me tru de long snow from de Saint M'rees to Grand Lac, but dey not tak' François Hertel. Dees spring I fin' her. She ees out dere wid de canoe."
Hertel pointed through the door to the shore, then turned fiercely upon the factor.
"De man I keel cum lak' de wolf in de night to tak' ma wife. Wat would you do?"
The frankness of the voyageur carried with it the aroma of truth. The factor knew men in the rough, and this one shaped up square; or else he was playing a game too subtle for the Scotchman's understanding. Still, the orders from Ottawa received in the Christmas mail were not to be lightly ignored.
"Hertel, if what you say is so, I don't blame you for getting your man and taking to the bush. But if it leaks out to Ottawa that you are trading here, I'm in a pretty mess."
"At Ottawa I am dead man," and Hertel handed the factor a soiled envelope. Campbell took from the envelope two folded sheets of paper. On the first was written:
"On March last it was reported to the authorities at Ottawa that the body of François Hertel had been found frozen on the Abitibi Trail, by Harricanaw Crees. Pierre, the trapper, who was at Flying Post, on Grand Lac, in January, must trap his fur in the James Bay country for a year or two.
"A Friend of Pierre."
Campbell was plainly mystified. Then he opened the other note. It was dated at Coocoocache on a letter-head of the Hudson's Bay Company, and ran as follows:
"To any Company man—
"The bearer, François Hertel, has long been a faithful employee of the Company on the Saint Maurice. One night, a year ago, in June, his house on the island at Coocoocache was burned down. At the same time Walker, a railroad contractor with a bad record, was seen paddling from the island to the construction camp. Failing to find the body of Hertel's wife in the ruins, we believed her thrown into the river to cover the crime. Hertel returned and obtaining proof of Walker's guilt, killed him and took to the bush. Last winter Hertel met two of the Government Police, who were on his trail, starving in a blizzard on Grand Lac, and at the risk of arrest brought them in to Flying Post. Out of gratitude, they reported at Ottawa that he had been found frozen on the Abitibi Trail, and wrote to Hertel at Coocoocache to that effect. Returning this spring to Coocoocache, Hertel found his wife, who had escaped from Walker in a canoe and been picked up by Vermilion River Crees. He leaves here for the north until the matter blows over, and carries an order on Company posts issued to Pierre Chapleau, to amount of $300.00. Please honor this order, against Coocoocache, and give him any help you can, as he is the best canoeman and hunter on the Saint Maurice. We think a good deal of him and believe him justified in what he did.
"Andrew Scott, H. B. C. Coocoocache.
"J. McCreaby, H. B. C. Lost Lake."
"Well, if Jock McCready says you're all right, Hertel, it's good enough for me," said Campbell, returning the envelope. "I've put in some good years with old Jock at Fort Chimo and the Fading Waters. But you'll have to pass as Pierre Chapleau at the post here, and keep away when the Crees are in for the trade. It won't do to have it leak out to Rupert House that you're here."
"T'anks, Meester Cameel, I understan'," and the Frenchman gripped the factor's hand.
"Now, you'll have to hurry to cruise out good trappin'-grounds and net whitefish for your dogs."
"De free fur-countree ees far from here?"
"The best of it is; some of my Crees trap clear over on Nottaway waters. You'll have to move lively to get your shack built before the freeze-up. And mind you keep off trapped grounds. The Crees will wipe you out if you don't."
Hertel smiled good-naturedly at the warning. He knew only too well the law of the fur-country that there shall be no trespass in another's valleys.
"Oh, by the way!" continued Campbell, "if you're not afraid of Windigo, Injun-devils, and such nonsense, there's a country over west that old Joe, my head man, can tell you about. You won't be running into any of the Crees over there; they won't go near it; they say it's full of evil spirits,"
Hertel's keen face lighted with interest.
"Were ees dees countree?"
"It lies four or five days' travel straight west, on Harricanaw waters. The Cree name for this branch is Devil's River. I'll call Tom; he started to trap it once, but was almost scared to death and quit."
Presently a wrinkled Cree, aged in the Company's service, was smoking a pipe with Hertel and the factor.
"You know the trail to the valley of the Windigo, Tom?"
The Indian looked suspiciously at the two men, then nodded gravely.
"Good huntin'-ground? No Injun trap that valley?"
The Cree shook his head. "No Injun hunt dere for long tam; too much devil. Plentee game dere, I t'ink."
"How far is it from here?"
"Four, five sleep."
"You make a map of the trail to the Windigo valley on this paper. Pierre is going to trap it this winter."
The Cree's small eyes widened in wonder at the daring of the stranger who would winter in the dread land of evil spirits, shunned by the Ptarmigan Lake Indians for years as they would shun the pestilence. He turned to Hertel in protest.
"De Windigo, he live in dis valley; he rob trap; kill you; eat you' squaw. It is ver' bad place." Closing his eyes, the Cree shook his head and shoulders as if to blot out the evil memory of the valley of the Windigo.
"Never mind, Tom, Pierre takes the risk. He's a medicine-man in his country and has a charm for the devils. You show him how to get into the valley with this pencil and paper."
So, much against his will, old Tom proceeded to trace a crude map of the waterways through which ran the trail to the haunted valley of the Crees.
Hertel wished to lose himself—to disappear from the ken even of the fur-posts. Campbell he could trust, but to the Crees, trading at the post, must be given a wide berth. How better, he thought, than to build his shack and run his trap-lines in the forbidden country, the land no Indian would enter? As for the Windigo and devils, he had a charm for the worst of them in the bark of his 30-30. That the evil spirits of the Crees travelled on four padded feet, and their pelts would bring good prices over Campbell's counter at Ptarmigan Lake he had little doubt. Hertel had spent his life in the Indian country and knew the Cree make-up—his superstition and childlike belief in the supernatural. The hardy Frenchman had smiled as the old Cree gravely pictured the fate that awaited him and his Marie in the far-off valley. He had more than once heard a lynx or a wolverine, called Injun-devil, fill the forest with demoniacal caterwauling that would have frozen the blood of a superstitious Indian, and later, when he found the vocalist in his trap, had terminated the nocturnal voice-culture by knocking the brute on the head with a club. For him the land of evil spirits held no terror.
The next day Hertel shoved his heavily loaded canoe from the beach at Ptarmigan Lake House, called a last bonjour to the factor, and with Marie handling the bow paddle, headed west. Day after day the voyageurs, following the Cree's map, toiled by river and lake and portage toward the Harricanaw headwaters, until at last their canoe floated on the Devil's River of the Crees. Then Hertel poled up the swift stream to its headwater lakes, where they were to net the whitefish needed for winter food for the dogs.
As they pushed up-stream between timbered hills that rolled away to the blue horizon, the woman in the bow exclaimed with delight at the beauty of the valley vistas which every turn of the river opened to their eyes. And each outburst of admiration brought a low chuckle from the stern-man toiling at his pole, as he thought how little Marie might appreciate the beauty of this land had she but known that these forests bathed in the August sun held in their silent depths terrors unspeakable; that this soft valley, asleep in the spell of the northern summer, was the lair of demons insatiable and pitiless. But François Hertel was a wise man and no baiter of women, so held his tongue.
While they netted and dried whitefish at the lakes, Hertel cruised the country for a good central location for his cabin. Everywhere he found signs of game. The shores of dead-water and pond were trampled by moose which came to feed on lily-roots and water grasses at sundown. The round-toed hoof-prints of caribou trails networked the mud and moss of the muskeg beyond the valley. Along the streams mink and otter had left numberless tracks. Doubtless the hurrying feet of marauding marten, fox, and fisher would mark the first snow on the ridges. Truly the Cree trappers had given the country a wide berth, for never had the Frenchman seen such evidence of game.
Creeping south from the great bay the first September frosts roamed the valley, edging the river with the red of the willows, leaving a wake of birch ridges aflame against the sombre green of the spruce. The rising sunlifting shrouds of river mist, rolled them back to vanish on the ridges, and later died on western hills, hung with haze.
Long before the first snowfall the Hertels moved from their tent to a cabin of spruce logs, chinked with moss, flanked by a mud-mortared stone chimney. Beside it a pile of birch logs and split wood was heaped high against the withering cold of the coming long snows.
Night after night through the October moon the geese honked south, racing the nipping winds which, following hard on the end of the Indian summer, swept the last leaves from poplar and birch. Then suddenly, between one sunset and dawn, narrows and dead-water closed tight, an icy film crept out from the lake shores, and the subarctic winter shut in upon the lone cabin in the valley of demons.
By December the snow stood three feet deep in the forest levels, and for twenty miles the traps of Hertel lay set on the ridges and along the streams. Never had he reaped such a harvest of fur. Black and silver fox, marten, otter, and mink, all had found his traps; and the pelts of two gray wolves hung on his cabin walls.
The early dusk of one December day overtook Hertel at the far end of his lines down the valley, where at a lean-to, thrown together in the fall, he passed the night once or twice a week. Already that buccaneer of the forests, the wolverine, had discovered some of his traps and robbed him of valuable fur. So with the most hated enemy of the trapper loose in the valley, only constant patrolling of his lines could save him the loss of many a prized fox and marten.
Hertel cut his wood for the night, shovelled away the new snow with a shoe, and built a hot fire at the open end of the lean-to. He threw two whitefish to the husky which drew his small sled, boiled his tea and moose-meat, then rolled himself in his warm rabbit-skin blankets and slept.
It was a windless night, when the relentless fingers of the frost grip the timber till it snaps; when the shell of river and lake, contracting, splits with the boom of cannon, and the stars, glittering like myriad jewels, swarm the heavens. Above the black silhouette of far hills the aurora alternately glowed and died, then, in snakelike ribbons of light, streamed across the north.
Suddenly the husky, curled beside the blanketed figure by the fire, straightened, lifted his head, and sniffed the stinging air. Then, with hair bristling from ears to tail, he stood up while his shaggy throat swelled in a low rumble of warning to the one who slept.
Hertel stirred and thrust his head from the blankets.
"Qu'avez-vous? What's the matter with you?" he grumbled.
For reply the dog lifted his nose to the stars in a long howl. Thinking the husky had scented game, Hertel was again adjusting his blankets, when across the hushed valley floated a long cry, half howl, rising to a shrill scream, then dying slowly away.
Again the excited dog flung back the wolfish challenge of the husky to the unknown foe. Quieting the animal, Hertel, now thoroughly aroused, sat up in his blankets, listening intently for a repetition of the wail. Presently it was repeated, but this time farther up the valley.
The warning of the old Cree at Ptarmigan Lake flashed across his memory.
"De Windigo, he leeve een dees valley. He rob trap; kill you; eat you' squaw."
"Bon soir! M'sieu' Weendigo!" called the imperturbable Frenchman as he reached for his Winchester in its skin case, and, drawing out the rifle, threw a shell into the barrel. Hertel had little fear of the thing that waked the white valley with its unearthly cries. For if it had lungs to howl, it had lungs and heart and stomach to stop his rifle-bullet, or bleed at the thrust of his knife, and from the Roberval to the white Gatineau, men knew how sure was the eye and what power lay in the right arm, of François Hertel. But, as he sat listening with straining ears, he cudgelled his brain to identify this prowler of the night. Lynx he had heard screaming like a child or a woman in agony; the wolverine, or Injun-devil, he had known to terrify superstitious French and Indian trappers by his maniacal caterwauling, and the howl of timber-wolves on a fresh trail was familiar to his ears; but this was neither lynx, wolf, nor wolverine. What could it be? Then the Cree's flouted tale of the demons of the valley returned to mock him.
For one thing he was deeply thankful—Marie, in the shack with the dog, far up the river, had not been wakened. Now, moreover, she must never know the Cree tradition of the valley or he could not leave her again alone, with this yowling thing, beast or devil, to terrify her.
Hugging his replenished fire, Hertel smoked a pipe, wrestling with the mystery, as his dog whined and fretted beside him, then turned into his blankets.
The next morning he was swinging up the hard-packed river-trail behind his sled thinking of the hot dinner awaiting him at the shack, when the dog stopped, sniffed in the snow, then turned sharply off the trail, upsetting the sled. Running up, Hertel found the husky nosing huge tracks which crossed the sled-trail at right angles.
"Ah-hah! De Weendigo travel here, eh?" he exclaimed, studying the footprints. They were shaped somewhat like bear-tracks, with deep indentations of long claws, but larger than any bear-tracks he had ever seen, and, besides, bear were holed up for the winter. What beast, then, could have made that trail?
In the mental make-up of Hertel there was no trace of superstition. But the emotional Marie was keenly susceptible to the supernatural, and it was of her that he thought as he examined this strange trail in the snow. This thing must be kept from his wife if he wished to finish the winter in the valley.
As he shuffled through the soft snow beside the trail, one characteristic of the footprints was at once marked by his trained eyes—their shallowness. Despite his tracks, the beast was not heavy or he would have sunk deeper into the snow. Then, from the looks of the trail, he did not pick up his feet; he was a slow and lumbering traveller. The impulse to follow the tracks, run the beast down on snow-shoes with his dog, and have it out with his 30-30 was strong in the hunter; but it meant another night away from Marie, 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 belonged to the one who could hold it by fair fight or foul. The wild blood of the coureurs-de-bois which coursed the veins of the Frenchman was up.
Next morning Hertel started under the stars, promising to return before sunset. He was following the shoulder of a long ridge on which were set cabane traps for fisher and marten. In a few of these the bait, as usual, had lured foraging moose-birds or squirrel interlopers to their doom. Resetting the traps, he continued on until a shattered cabane with the silent witnesses in the snow about it told a story which brought from his throat a cry of rage.
The jaws of the steel trap gripped the severed fore foot of a marten, while, strewn with tufts of fur, the blood-stained snow in the vicinity was trampled by the same tracks which had crossed the sled-trail on the river.
Quickly freeing the excited husky from his harness, Hertel, fierce for revenge, abandoned his sled and took up the trail. With this plunderer loose on his trapping-grounds, his long days of toil would be thrown away. He must either kill his enemy at once or drive him from the valley. Over ridges and horsebacks, down along frozen watercourses, the pursuing trapper followed the tracks in the snow. For a space the eager husky led, but at length the long snow-shoe swing wore down the plunging dog, who sank deep at every leap, and he was content to follow in the better going of the packed trail of his master. On through the hours of the short December day toiled man and dog. If his quarry had not too long a start on him, Hertel knew he would overhaul it in the deep snow before the dusk, for, from the spacing and the depth of the tracks, the animal was travelling slowly. Twice it had stopped to rest, leaving an impression that baffled the woodcraft of the Frenchman. If he could only, for an instant, line up his rifle-sights on this robber, he, François Hertel, would give him a "bon-jour" of lead that would sicken him—evil spirit, Windigo, or furry thief—of the game of ruining the trapping of a Saint Maurice man.
Finally, in the afternoon, the trail led over the watershed ridges into a muskeg country to the south. The masked sun dipped behind western hills and dusk already hung in the thick timber, when the tracks brought weary man and dog to the edge of a wide barren. Shortly the swift northern night would close in, and he was already three hours' hard snow-shoeing from the shack.
With hood thrown back from his unbelted capote, while, even in the freezing air, the sweat coursed down the bold features, Hertel searched with narrowed eyes the silent reaches of the white barren, but in vain. He would have followed the trail deep into the moonlit night, camped on it, and taken it up at daylight, but he had promised to return to a woman who waited alone back in the valley. With a sigh he turned homeward with his dog.
In the days following he found his mink and otter traps on the streams around the headwater lakes unmolested, and reached the shack without again crossing the strange trail.
On the night of his return Hertel was pulling at his after-supper pipe, watching a piece of smoke-tanned moose-hide take the shape of a moccasin in the capable hands of Marie, when one of the dogs stood up with a low growl, hair bristling like a mad porcupine's quills. Then both huskies made for the door. Hertel sprang to the low entrance of the shack, while his wife's dark face went white with dread. Outside, the light from a frozen moon flooded the clearing in the forest. Hertel hushed the dogs, blocking the open door with his body, then waited, tense as a bow-string. Shortly, from the ridge back of the shack, drifted out over the still valley a wail, half-human, rising to a cat-like scream piercing in intensity, then slowly dying away.
The trapper closed the door, pushed aside the clamoring huskies, and seized his caribou-skin coat and fur mittens.
"Mon Dieu, eet ees le diable! Eet ees le diable!" moaned the terrified woman. "Don' leeve me, François!"
"Eet ees only de lucivee!" the man insisted as she clung to him. "He shout beeg, dees lynx, but he seeng 'noder song w'en he feel de bullet."
With such talk he strove to hearten the horror-stricken woman, but Hertel knew that the dread cry that chilled the blood of all living things that heard it was the howl of no lynx. What it was he was going up into the black spruce to find out.
"I leeve de husky and shotgun. You safe wid dem." And embracing the hysterical girl he closed the door against the dogs, who were useless in a still hunt, stepped into the thongs of his snow-shoes, and started up the ridge.
The muscles of Hertel's face set stone-hard as he hurried in the direction from which had come the cry. To-night his enemy should not escape him. The beast was not more than a mile or two back in the "bush," and in the deep snow the trapper knew that he could give any four-footed creature in the North that much start and run him down before dawn, for no dog-runner from Lake Saint John to Flying Post on the Ottawa headwaters could take the trail and hold it from François Hertel. Beast or devil, whatever he was, he left tracks in the snow to follow. Beast or devil—and there had been enough in the last few days to sway a mind less balanced, to shake nerves less steady, than Hertel's—if it made tracks in the snow and howled at night, there was flesh and blood for his bullet and knife to find. If neither lead nor steel could tear its vitals, then Hertel was beaten. It was Windigo or demon, as the Cree had said, and he would slink out of the valley like a whipped husky. So ran the thoughts of the desperate Frenchman as he mounted the ridge.
At length he stood on the crest of the hill overlooking the frozen river-valley lit by the low moon, when the eerie wail lifted from the black forest in a creek-bottom below him.
Hertel glanced at the action of his rifle and broke into a run. As he swung swiftly through the soundless forest, ghostly shapes of snow-shoe rabbits faded before him into the white waste; a snowy owl, disturbed in his hunting, floated off like a wraith.
He had travelled some distance when suddenly he ran into the familiar trail of the beast at the edge of a spruce swamp.
"Now," muttered the hunter, "you run lak snow-shoe rabbit, M'sieu' Weendigo, or dees tam François Hertel get you."
Fear of the hated thing was not in him. The raw lust for battle made his blood hot as he plunged forward on the trail. Again rose the cry, this time nearer. His quarry had neither scented nor heard him, for plainly he was not travelling. But already the wind had shifted and, to the chagrin of the trapper, the moon now traversed a thickening sky where the stars grew dim. Hertel cursed under his breath, for without light the tracks would be lost in the gloom of the spruce. He was following stealthily now, lifting his feet to muffle the click of his shoes, his muscles tense as springs for the swift action which sight of the beast would loose.
Finally, from the top of a hard-wood knoll, his keen eyes swept a beaver meadow some distance below, to make out, entering the thick scrub at its edge, a dark shape. The rifle flew to his shoulder. Once, twice, three times the silence was shattered; then the trapper ran as only one born in the North can run on snow-shoes. At the spot where the beast had disappeared there was no blood sign on the snow, but the lopped branch of a fir told by how little the snap-shot in the dim light of the forest had missed its mark.
THE RIFLE FLEW TO HIS SHOULDER
Plunging ahead, he took up the trail, less distinct now, in the masked light of the moon and stars. If he were to see his game again, he had no time to lose. The trail now doubled back toward the swamp, and the moon and stars were soon gone. The frenzied hunter was forced to bend low to distinguish the tracks which zigzagged through low cedar and spruce. Time and again he tripped and fell as he forced his way headlong through the brush on the flank of the swamp. Then he ran into a network of tracks leading in all directions, utterly obliterating the fresh trail he followed. The wily brute had doubled back to his starting-point that night, where his trail would be lost. The game was up.
Soon even his own back tracks were indistinguishable, so with a wide circle through the swamp the disappointed trapper turned homeward. But in his defeat there was ground for hope. He had seen the thing in the life, unmistakably; shot at it, and learned that it feared the man on its trail. Instead of raging at him with teeth and claws, or loosing upon its helpless victim the black terrors of the old Cree's tale, this Windigo, devil, or what you will, had travelled like a bull caribou for the safety of the swamp. Elated at the thought, the Frenchman laughed loudly; beast or evil spirit, it had no magic for the rifle-bullet of François Hertel. Some day luck would turn, some day a wail should rise in the valley that would wake even the sleeping bears in their dens. It would be the death-cry of M'sieu' Weendigo.
At the shack he found his wife keeping sleepless vigil for his return. The agony of fear she had endured was plainly written on the drawn face.
"You see de Weendigo?" she gasped,
"Oua, I see heem," laughed the hardy Frenchman, taking her in his arms. "I shoot, and he run lak snow-shoe rabbit for de swamp. I mak' bad shot for de light. Eet ees only beeg luciree. I get heem some day in de trap." And he patted her shoulders reassuringly.
Marie's travels took her no farther than her rabbit and ptarmigan snares in the neighboring forest, so she did not know that in size the tracks of the beast dwarfed those of a lynx, and he did not intend she should.
The day following Hertel beat through the swamp, but so many tracks led out of it over the watershed that he gave up all idea of immediate pursuit. Returning to the shack he overhauled two bear-traps, the steel jaws of which bristled with vicious teeth, harnessed a husky to the sled, and started for his marten cabanes across the river. There, before two of the stick houses, he buried in the snow the traps with their log clogs in the manner that he hid lynx-traps to take the pilfering wolverines that had already harassed his lines. If the night-wailer followed down this trap-line again, he would not escape the hidden steel jaws gaping under the snow. Then on a line of fisher-traps Hertel erected three log deadfalls, which would crush the life from a three-hundred-pound bear.
"Eef he got bone to break, dees weel break dem," chuckled the trapper as he turned homeward.
For a week Hertel patrolled the sleeping forests of the white valley, but neither heard his enemy nor found fresh signs. Twice he climbed the big ridge and traversed the swamp beyond, where he had lost the trail the night the moon failed him, but evidently the beast had abandoned his former haunts, for the new snow lay unmarked. Over the river the logs in the deadfalls still menaced the doomed creature that should trip them, but the yawning jaws of one of the bear-traps had closed on a young wolverine rashly entering the house of sticks which his cunning elders first would have torn to pieces gingerly from the rear, then ferreted out the bait, or eaten the animal in the sprung trap inside.
Another week of waiting passed and Hertel began to wonder if the beast had quit the country. Then, one bitter night on his return under the stars from the lakes, the familiar challenge floated faintly up the valley,
"Ah-hah! Eet ees you, mon ami?" he muttered, and quickened his stride. He had travelled for some time when the cry was repeated. The thought of Marie alone in the shack with the cowed huskies, while the skulking thing was loose in the neighboring forest, spurred him into a run. He was nearly home when again the windless night was filled with the horror of the lingering wail echoing from the hills. Now the runner on the river-trail was close enough to locate his enemy. The beast was on the ridge the trapper had prepared for him.
"By Gar!" Hertel exclaimed, in his joy at the discovery. "I get you dees tam, M'sieu' Weendigo, for sure."
Shaking a mittened fist at the black hill across the valley, he turned up to his cabin, where he found Marie and the dogs with nerves on edge over the return of the dreaded prowler of the night.
While the Frenchman wished to give his traps and deadfalls a fair chance to catch the plunderer, the fear that the beast might avoid them and again escape hurried him through supper. Heartening the trembling Marie as best he could, he oiled the action of his Winchester and was off. With the approach of January the nights were growing increasingly bitter. Entering the stinging air, Hertel drew the fur-lined hood of his capote over his face, where his hot breath turned to ice on his mustache, and reknotted the sash at his waist. The inexorable grip of the frost was tightening on the ice-locked valley.
He climbed the ridge and waited, for the beast might leave the trap-line if he discovered that he was followed. Once Hertel heard the cry hardly a mile away, then he went to his first fisher-trap. The thief had done his work well. The trap was sprung and the bait gone. The second had been treated in the same way. At the next trap was a deadfall, and the Frenchman's heart pounded with hope as he approached. The drop-log had been tripped and lay in the snow in front of the cabane, which was torn to pieces.
The trapper cursed out loud. The cunning of the beast was uncanny. Through the brain of Hertel there flashed a flicker of doubt. Could this after all be the work of a devil in brute shape? But the Frenchman's head was hard, and grasping his rifle he continued on.
For some time the night had been free from the voice, when, as he approached his second deadfall, the wail again rose from the lower shoulder of the ridge down the valley. But, as it lifted in volume to the maniacal scream, it ceased abruptly, as if choked off by some giant hand.
Hertel found the remaining deadfalls in similar condition to the first. The tracks on the snow told the same story. The ponderous engines of destruction had been rendered harmless from the outside by the crafty thief.
There was one hope left—the toothed jaws of steel hidden in the snow at the end of the marten line. He would go to them at once and take up the trail from there.
The cold was increasing. Deeper and deeper bit the fangs of the frost. His eyebrows and mustache were a mass of ice. Time and again all feeling left his toes under the thongs of his shoes, and he swung his gun from mittened hand to hand to keep up circulation. The boom of the riven river-ice and the snap of the timber alone violated the white silence under the star-incrusted sky.
The lone runner in the forest approached the first of his bear-traps at the marten cabanes. If the hairy thief had escaped these, little hope remained of running him down that night in this withering air which cut the lungs like thrusts of a knife. Rounding a thicket of low spruce, Hertel sighted the trap. Like a flash the hunter dropped to his knees, cocked rifle at his shoulder. One, two, three seconds his eye held his sights lined on a black shape by the cabane. But the mass on the snow was motionless. Then, rising, Hertel stealthily moved forward, rifle ready. Suspicious, he stopped a hundred feet from the trap, peering long at the spectacle before him, then slowly shook his head. With rifle thrust forward and every nerve tense, Hertel approached the trap. Was his enemy in his power at last, or was he being lured into some fiendish ambuscade? He glanced quickly to the side and rear. There was nothing there. The shape in the snow did not stir. Then he walked deliberately to the trap.
"By Gar!"
The Frenchman stared at the hairy bulk crushed in the grip of the merciless steel jaws.
He touched the thing with his snow-shoe. It was frozen stiff.
With a wrench he turned the heavy trap and its victim over—to stare into the swart face, hideous in its grimace of death, of a Cree Indian.