Page:Toilers of the Trails.djvu/196

 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.