Breed of the Wolf/Chapter 26

When the first flight of snowy geese, southward bound, flashed in an undulating white cloud over Whale River, the canoe of Jean Marcel was loaded with supplies for a winter in the land of the Windigo. And in memory of Antoine Beaulieu, he was taking with him as comrade and partner the eighteen-year-old cousin of the dead man whose kinsmen had humbly made their amends for their stand against Marcel before the hearing. Young Michel Beaulieu, of stouter fiber than Antoine, had at length overcome his scruples against entering the land of dread, through his admiration for Marcel’s daring and his confidence in the man whose reputation since the hearing and the fight with the Lelacs had been now firmly established with the Whale River Crees. When Marcel had repeatedly assured the boy that he had neither seen the trail of Machi-Manito, the devil, nor once heard the wailing of a giant Windigo through all the long snows of the past winter in the Salmon country, Michel’s pride at the offer had finally conquered his fears.

So leaving the puppy he had given Julie as the nucleus for a mission dog team, and presenting Gillies with another, Marcel packed into the canoe already deep with supplies the three remaining children of Fleur, whom he had named in honor of his three stanch friends, Colin, Jules, and Angus, and gripping the hands of those who had assembled on the beach, eased the craft into the flood tide.

“Good-by and good luck, Jean!” called Gillies.

“De rabbit weel be few; net de beeg cache of feesh before de freeze-up!” urged the practical Jules.

“No fear, Jules. We ketch all de feesh in de lac,” laughed Jean, then his eyes sought Julie Breton’s sober face as he said in French:

“I will not come back for Christmas, Julie. The pups will not be old enough for the trail.”

And with the conviction that he was saying good-by to Julie Breton forever—that on his return in June she would be far in the south at East Main with Wallace, he pushed off. He heard Julie call after him.

“Bon voyage, Jean! God bless you!”

As the paddles of Jean and Michel drove the boat into the stream, the whining Fleur, beholding her world moving away from her, plunged into the river after them.

“Go back, Fleur!” ordered Jean sternly. “You travel de shore; de cano’ ees too full wid de pup.”

So the protesting Fleur turned back to follow the shore. The puppies, too young and clumsy yet to keep abreast, of the tide-driven canoe on the broken beach of the river, had to be freighted.

When the boat was well out in the flood, Marcel waved his cap with a last, “A’voir!”

Far upstream, a half hour later, rhythmic flashes growing swiftly fainter and fainter until they faded from sight, marked for many a long moon the last of Jean Marcel.

September came and waned and on the heels of September followed a week of mellow October days lulling the North into temporary forgetfulness of the menace of the bitter months to come.

Then the unleashed winds from the Arctic freighted with the first of the long snows beat down the coast and river valleys, locking the land with ice. But far in the Windigo-haunted hills of the forbidden land of the Crees a man and a boy, snug in snow-banked tepee, laughed as the winds whined through November nights and the snow made deep in the timber, for their cache was heaped high with frozen trout, white-fish, and caribou.

With the coming of the snow, the puppies, young as they were, soon learned that the life of a husky was not all mad pursuit of rabbit or wood mouse and stalking of ptarmigan; not all rioting through the bush, on the trail of some mysterious four-footed forest denizen; not alone the gulping of a supper of toothsome whitefish or trout followed by a long nap curled in a cozy hole in the snow, black noses thrust into bushy tails. Although their wolf blood made them at first less amenable than the average husky puppy to the discipline of collar and traces, their great mother through the force of her example as lead dog and the swift punishment she meted out to any culprit, contributed as much as Jean’s own efforts to the breaking of the puppies to harness.

Jules, the largest, marked like his mother, like the other puppy Julie had chosen, with slate-gray patches on head and back, was all dog; but the rogues, Colin and Angus, mottled with the lighter gray of their sire and with his rangier build, inherited much of his wolf nature. Many a whipping from the long lash of plaited caribou hide, many a sharp nip from Fleur’s white teeth, were required to teach the young wolves the manners of camp and trail and to bend their wild wills to the habit of instant obedience to the voice of Jean Marcel. But Fleur was a conscientious mother and under her stern tutelage and the firm but kind treatment of Jean—who loved to rough and wrestle the puppies in the dry snow—the shaggy ruffians grew in the wisdom of trace and trail and in their wild natures ripened love for the master who fed and romped with them and meted out punishment only to him who had sinned.

In search of black and silver foxes, whose pelts—worth in the world of cities their weight in gold—are the chief inspiration of the red hunter’s dreams, Jean had run his new trap lines far in the valleys of the Salmon watershed. To the increasing satisfaction of the still worried Michel the sole noises of the night which had yet met his fearful ears had been the scream of lynx, the occasional caterwauling of wolverene and the hunting chorus of timber wolves. But darkness still held potential terror for the lad in whom, at his mother’s knee, had been instilled dread of the demon-infested bad lands north of the Ghost, and he never camped alone.

January came with its withering winds, burning and cracking the faces of the hunters following their trap lines. The fine, swirling snow struck like shot and stung like the lash of whips. Often when facing the drive of a blizzard even the hardy Fleur, wrinkling her nose with pain, would stop and turn her back on the needle-pointed barrage. At times when the fierce cold, freezing all moisture from the atmosphere, filled the air with powdery crystals of ice, the true sun, flanked by sun dogs in a ringed halo, lifted above the shimmering barrens, dazzlingly bright.

One night when Jean and Michel, camped in the timber at the end of the farthest line of fox traps, had turned into their robes before a hot fire, in front of which in a snow hole they had stretched a shed tent both as windbreak and heat reflector, a low wail, more sob than cry of night prowler, drifted up the valley.

“You hear dat?” whispered Michel.

The hairy throat of Fleur, burrowed in the snow close to the tent, rumbled like distant thunder. Marcel already fast drifting into sleep, muttered crossly:

“It ees de Windigo come to eat you, Michel.”

Again upon the hushed valley under star-incrusted heavens where the borealis flickered and pulsed and streamed in fantastic traceries of fire, broke a wailing sob.

Michel sat up with a cry, turning a face gray with fear to the man beside him. Again Fleur growled, her lifted nose sniffing the freezing air, and started her awakened puppies into a chorus of snarls and yelps.

Raised on an elbow, Marcel sleepily asked: “What de trouble, Michel? You and Fleur hear de Windigo?”

“Listen!” insisted the boy. “I nevair hear dat soun’ before.”

Silencing the dog, Jean pushed back his hood to free his ears, smiling into the blanched face of the wild-eyed boy beside him. Shortly the noiseless night was marred by a sobbing moan, as if some stricken creature writhed under the torture of mangled flesh.

Marcel knew that neither wolf, lynx, nor wolverene—the “Injun devil” of the superstitious—was responsible for the sound. What could it be? No furred prowler of the night—for he knew the varied voices of them all—had such a muffled cry. Puzzled and curious he left his rabbit-skin robes and stood with the terrified Michel beside the fire. In an uproar the dogs ran into the bush with manes bristling and bared fangs, to hurl their husky challenge down the valley at the invisible menace.

“It ees de Windigo! Dey tell me at Whale Riviere not to come in dees country! De Windigo an’ Matchi-Manito are loose here,” whispered Michel through chattering teeth.

Jean Marcel did not know what it was that made night horrible with its moaning, but he intended to learn at once. The lungs behind that noise could be pierced by rifle bullet and the cold steel of his knife. There was not a creature in the North which Fleur would not readily battle. He would soon learn if the hide of a Windigo was tough enough to turn the knifelike fangs of Fleur and the bullets of his .30-.30. Seizing Michel by the shoulders he shook the boy roughly.

“I tell you, Michel, de devil dat mak’ dat soun’ travel on four feet. You tie up de pup an’ wait here. Fleur an’ I go an’ breeng back hees skin.”

But the panic-stricken Michel would not be left alone and, when he had fastened the excited puppies, he drew his rifle from its skin case with shaking hands and joined Marcel.

Holding the aroused Fleur with difficulty on her rawhide leash, Marcel snowshoed through the timber in the direction from which the sound had come. After traveling some time they stopped to listen. From somewhere ahead, seemingly but a few hundred yards down the valley, floated the eerie sobbing. Michel’s gun slipped to the snow from his palsied hands. Turning, Jean gripped the boy’s arm.

“Why you come? You no good to shoot. De Windigo eat you w’ile you hunt for your gun.”

Picking up the rifle, the boy threw off the mittens fastened to his sleeves by thongs, and, gritting his teeth, followed Marcel and Fleur.

Shortly they stopped again to listen. Straight ahead through the spruce the moaning rose and fell. Fleur, frantic to reach the mysterious enemy, plunged forward dragging Marcel, followed by the quaking boy who held his cocked rifle in readiness for the rush of beast or devil. Passing through scrub, a small clearing opened up before them. Checking Fleur, Marcel peered through the dim light of the forest into the opening lit by the stars, when the clearing echoed with the uncanny sound. Marcel’s keen eyes strained across the starlit snow into the murk beyond.

“By gar! I see noding dere! It ees de Windigo for sure!” gasped Michel.

But the Frenchman was staring fixedly at a clump of spruce on the opposite edge of the opening. As the unearthly sobbing rose again into the night, he loosed the maddened dog and followed.

They were close to the spruce when a great gray shape suddenly rose from the snow directly in their path. For an instant a pair of pale wings flapped wildly in their faces. Then a squawk of terror was smothered as the fangs of Fleur struck at the feathered shape of a huge snowy owl. A wrench of the dog’s powerful neck, and the ghostly hunter of the northern nights had made his last patrol, victim of his own curiosity.

With a loud laugh Jean turned to the dazed Michel:

“Tak’ good look at de Windigo, Michel. My fox trap hold heem fas’ w’ile he seeng to de stars.”

The amazed Michel stared at the white demon in the fox trap with open mouth. “I t’ink dat owl de Windigo for sure,” he muttered.

“I nevair hear de owl cry dat way myself, Michel, but I know dat Fleur and my gun mak’ any Windigo in dees countree look whiter dan dat bird. W’en we come near dees place I expect somet’ing in dat fox trap.”

And strangely, through the remaining moons of the long snows the sleep of the lad was not again disturbed by the wailing of Windigos seeking to devour a young half-breed Cree by the name of Michel Beaulieu.