Page:Toilers of the Trails.djvu/202

 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