In many years there had not been such a storm in all the Northland as
that which followed swiftly in the trail of the first snows that had
driven Neewa into his den--the late November storm of that year which
will long be remembered as KUSKETA PIPPOON (the Black Year), the year
of great and sudden cold, of starvation and of death.
It came a week after Miki had left the cavern wherein Neewa was
sleeping so soundly. Preceding that, when all the forest world lay
under its mantle of white, the sun shone day after day, and the moon
and stars were as clear as golden fires in the night skies. The wind
was out of the west. The rabbits were so numerous they made hard floors
of the snow in thicket and swamp. Caribou and moose were plentiful, and
the early cry of wolves on the hunt was like music in the ears of a
thousand trappers in shack and teepee.
With appalling suddenness came the unexpected. There was no warning.
The day had dawned with a clear sky, and a bright sun followed the
dawn. Then the world darkened so swiftly that men on their traplines
paused in amazement. With the deepening gloom came a strange moaning,
and there was something in that sound that seemed like the rolling of a
great drum--the knell of an impending doom. It was THUNDER. The warning
was too late. Before men could turn back to safety, or build themselves
shelters, the Big Storm was upon them. For three days and three nights
it raged like a mad bull from out of the north. In the open barrens no
living creature could stand upon its feet. The forests were broken, and
all the earth was smothered. All things that breathed buried
themselves--or died; for the snow that piled itself up in windrows and
mountains was round and hard as leaden shot, and with it came an
intense cold.
On the third day it was sixty degrees below zero in the country between
the Shamattawa and Jackson's Knee. Not until the fourth day did living
things begin to move. Moose and caribou heaved themselves up out of the
thick covering of snow that had been their protection; smaller animals
dug their way out of the heart of deep drifts and mounds; a half of the
rabbits and birds were dead. But the most terrible toll was of men.
Many of those who were caught out succeeded in keeping the life within
their bodies, and dragged themselves back to teepee and shack. But
there were also many who did not return--five hundred who died between
Hudson Bay and the Athabasca in those three terrible days of the
KUSKETA PIPPOON.
In the beginning of the Big Storm Miki found himself in the "burnt"
country of Jackson's Knee, and instinct sent him quickly into deeper
timber. Here he crawled into a windfall of tangled trunks and
tree-tops, and during the three days he did not move. Buried in the
heart of the storm, there came upon him an overwhelming desire to
return to Neewa's den, and to snuggle up to him once more, even though
Neewa lay as if dead. The strange comradeship that had grown up between
the two--their wanderings together all through the summer, the joys and
hardships of the days and months in which they had fought and feasted
like brothers--were memories as vivid in his brain as if it had all
happened yesterday. And in the dark wind-fall, buried deeper and deeper
under the snow, he dreamed.
He dreamed of Challoner, who had been his master in the days of his
joyous puppyhood; he dreamed of the time when Neewa, the motherless
cub, was brought into camp, and of the happenings that had come to them
afterward; the loss of his master, of their strange and thrilling
adventures in the wilderness, and last of all of Neewa's denning-up. He
could not understand that. Awake, and listening to the storm, he
wondered why it was that Neewa no longer hunted with him, but had
curled himself up into a round ball, and slept a sleep from which he
could not rouse him. Through the long hours of the three days and
nights of storm it was loneliness more than hunger that ate at his
vitals. When on the morning of the fourth day he came out from under
the windfall his ribs were showing and there was a reddish film over
his eyes. First of all he looked south and east, and whined.
Through twenty miles of snow he travelled back that day to the ridge
where he had left Neewa. On this fourth day the sun shone like a
dazzling fire. It was so bright that the glare of the snow pricked his
eyes, and the reddish film grew redder. There was only a cold glow in
the west when he came to the end of his journey. Dusk had already begun
to settle over the roofs of the forests when he reached the ridge where
Neewa had found the cavern. It was no longer a ridge. The wind had
piled the snow up over it in grotesque and monstrous shapes. Rocks and
bushes were obliterated. Where the mouth of the cavern should have been
was a drift ten feet deep. Cold and hungry, thinned by his days and
nights of fasting, and with his last hope of comradeship shattered by
the pitiless mountains of snow, Miki turned back over his trail. There
was nothing left for him now but the old windfall, and his heart was no
longer the heart of the joyous comrade and brother of Neewa, the bear.
His feet were sore and bleeding, but still he went on. The stars came
out; the night was ghostly white in their pale fire; and it was
cold--terribly cold. The trees began to snap. Now and then there came a
report like a pistol-shot as the frost snapped at the heart of timber.
It was thirty degrees below zero. And it was growing colder. With the
windfall as his only inspiration Miki drove himself on. Never had he
tested his strength or his endurance as he strained them now. Older
dogs would have fallen in the trail or have sought shelter or rest. But
Miki was the true son of Hela, his giant Mackenzie hound father, and he
would have continued until he triumphed--or died.
But a strange thing happened. He had travelled twenty miles to the
ridge, and fifteen of the twenty miles back, when a shelf of snow gave
way under his feet and he was pitched suddenly downward. When he
gathered his dazed wits and stood up on his half frozen legs he found
himself in a curious place. He had rolled completely into a
wigwam-shaped shelter of spruce boughs and sticks, and strong in his
nostrils was the SMELL OF MEAT. He found the meat not more than a foot
from the end of his nose. It was a chunk of frozen caribou flesh
transfixed on a stick, and without questioning the manner of its
presence he gnawed at it ravenously. Only Jacques Le Beau, who lived
eight or ten miles to the east, could have explained the situation.
Miki had rolled into one of his trap-houses, and it was the bait he was
eating.
There was not much of it, but it fired Miki's blood with new life.
There was smell in his nostrils now, and he began clawing in the snow.
After a little his teeth struck something hard and cold. It was
steel--a fisher trap. He dragged it up from under a foot of snow, and
with it came a huge rabbit. The snow had so protected the rabbit that,
although several days dead, it was not frozen stiff. Not until the last
bone of it was gone did Miki's feast end. He even devoured the head.
Then he went on to the windfall, and in his warm nest slept until
another day.
That day Jacques Le Beau--whom the Indians called "Muchet-ta-aao" (the
One with an Evil Heart)--went over his trapline and rebuilt his
snow-smothered "houses" and re-set his traps.
It was in the afternoon that Miki, who was hunting, struck his trail in
a swamp several miles from the windfall. No longer was his soul stirred
by the wild yearning for a master. He sniffed, suspiciously, of Le
Beau's snowshoe tracks and the crest along his spine trembled as he
caught the wind, and listened. He followed cautiously, and a hundred
yards farther on came to one of Le Beau's KEKEKS or trap-shelters. Here
too, there was meat--fixed on a peg. Miki reached in. From under his
fore-paw came a vicious snap and the steel jaws of a trap flung sticks
and snow into his face. He snarled, and for a few moments he waited,
with his eyes on the trap. Then he stretched himself until he reached
the meat, without advancing his feet. Thus he had discovered the hidden
menace of the steel jaws, and instinct told him how to evade them.
For another third of a mile he followed Le Beau's tracks. He sensed the
presence of a new and thrilling danger, and yet he did not turn off the
trail. An impulse which he was powerless to resist drew him on. He came
to a second trap, and this time he robbed the bait-peg without
springing the thing which he knew was concealed close under it. His
long fangs clicked as he went on. He was eager for a glimpse of the
man-beast. But he did not hurry. A third, a fourth, and a fifth trap he
robbed of their meat.
Then, as the day ended, he swung westward and covered quickly the five
miles between the swamp and his windfall.
Half an hour later Le Beau came back over the line. He saw the first
empty KEKEK, and the tracks in the snow.
"TONNERRE!--a wolf!" he exclaimed. "And in broad day!"
Then a slow look of amazement crept into his face, and he fell upon his
knees in the snow and examined the tracks.
"NON!" he gasped. "It is a dog! A devil of a wild dog--robbing my
traps!"
He rose to his feet, cursing. From the pocket of his coat he drew a
small tin box, and from this box he took a round ball of fat. In the
heart of the fat was a strychnine capsule. It was a poison-bait, to be
set for wolves and foxes.
Le Beau chuckled exultantly as he stuck the deadly lure on the end of
the bait-peg.
"OW, a wild dog," he growled. "I will teach him. To-morrow he will be
dead."
On each of the five ravished bait-pegs he placed a strychnine capsule
rolled in its inviting little ball of fat.