THE VOICE OF THE WINDIGO
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 fibre 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 _Matchi
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 the three remaining
children of Fleur whom he had named in honor of his three staunch
friends, Colin, Jules and Angus, into the canoe already deep with
supplies, and gripping the hands of those who had assembled on the
beach, eased the craft into the flood-tide.
"Good-bye and good luck, Jean!" called Gillies.
"De rabbit weel be few; net beeg cache of feesh before de freeze-up!"
urged the practical Jules.
"No fear, Jules. We ketch all de feesh en 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."
With the conviction that he was saying good-bye to Julie Breton
forever--that on his return in June, she would be far in the south with
Wallace, he pushed off as she called, "_Bon voyage, Jean! Dieu vous
benisse!_" (God bless you!)
When 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 the _voyageurs_.
"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, yet too young and clumsy 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 up-stream, 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 waned, and the laggard rear-guard of the brant and Hutchins
geese, riding the first stinging northers, passed south in the wake of
the wavies. 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, whitefish 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 cosy hole in the snow, gray 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 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; 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, rolling them on their backs and
holding them helpless in the grip of his sinewy hands--as the shaggy
ruffians grew in the wisdom of trace and trail, so in their wild natures
ripened love for the master who fed and romped with them, meting out
punishment to him alone 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. But 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 wolverine 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; swirling with fine snow, which
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:
"Eet ees de Windigo come to eat you, Michel."
Again upon the hushed valley under star-encrusted heavens where the
borealis flickered and pulsed and streamed in fantastic traceries of
fire, broke a wailing sob.
With a cry Michel sat up turning a face gray with fear to the man beside
him. Again Fleur growled, her lifted nose sniffing the freezing air, to
send 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 nevaire 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 wolverine--the "Injun-devil" of
the superstitious--was responsible for the sound. What could it be? he
queried. No furred prowler of the night, and 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 the husky challenge down the valley at the
invisible menace.
"Eet ees de Windigo! Dey tell me at Whale Riviere not to come een dees
countree! De Windigo an' Matchi Manito ees loose here," whimpered 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 with which Fleur would not readily
battle. He would soon learn if the hide of a Windigo was tough enough to
turn the knife-like 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, with shaking hands he drew his rifle from
its skin case and joined Marcel.
Holding with difficulty on her rawhide leash the aroused Fleur leaping
ahead in the soft footing, Marcel snow-shoed through the timber in the
direction from which the sound had come.
After travelling 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
sleeve 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 star-lit snow into the murk
beyond, as Michel gasped in his ears:
"By Gar! I see noding dere! Eet ees de Windigo for sure!"
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 star."
The amazed Michel stared at the white demon in the fox trap with open
mouth. "I t'ink--dat h'owl--de Windigo for sure," he stuttered.
"I nevaire hear de h'owl cry dat way myself, Michel, but I know dat
Fleur and my gun mak' any Windigo een dees countree look whiter dan dat
bird. W'en we come near dees place I expect somet'ing een 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.