The other man was Raine--Philip Raine.
To-night he sat in Pierre Breault's cabin, with Pierre at the opposite
side of the table between them, and the cabin's sheet iron stove
blazing red just beyond. It was a terrible night outside. Pierre, the
fox hunter, had built his shack at the end of a long slim forefinger of
scrub spruce that reached out into the Barren, and to-night the wind
was wailing and moaning over the open spaces in a way that made Raine
shiver. Close to the east was Hudson's Bay--so close that a few moments
before when Raine had opened the cabin door there came to him the low,
never-ceasing thunder of the under-currents fighting their way down
through the Roes Welcome from the Arctic Ocean, broken now and then by
a growling roar as the giant forces sent a crack, like a great knife,
through one of the frozen mountains. Westward from Pierre's cabin there
stretched the lifeless Barren, illimitable and void, without rock or
bush, and overhung at day by a sky that always made Raine think of a
terrible picture he had once seen of Dore's "Inferno"--a low, thick
sky, like purple and blue granite, always threatening to pitch itself
down in terrific avalanches. And at night, when the white foxes yapped,
and the wind moaned--
"As I have hope of paradise I swear that I saw him--alive, M'sieu,"
Pierre was saying again over the table.
Raine, of the Fort Churchill patrol of the Royal Northwest Mounted
Police, no longer smiled in disbelief. He knew that Pierre Breault was
a brave man, or he would not have perched himself alone out in the
heart of the Barren to catch the white foxes; and he was not
superstitious, like most of his kind, or the sobbing cries and strife
of the everlasting night-winds would have driven him away.
"I swear it!" repeated Pierre.
Something that was almost eagerness was burning now in Philip's face.
He leaned over the table, his hands gripping tightly. He was
thirty-five; almost slim as Pierre himself, with eyes as steely blue as
Pierre's were black. There was a time, away back, when he wore a dress
suit as no other man in the big western city where he lived; now the
sleeves of his caribou skin coat were frayed and torn, his hands were
knotted, in his face were the lines of storm and wind.
"It is impossible," he said. "Bram Johnson is dead!"
"He is alive, M'sieu."
In Pierre's voice there was a strange tremble.
"If I had only HEARD, if I had not SEEN, you might disbelieve, M'sieu,"
he cried, his eyes glowing with a dark fire. "Yes, I heard the cry of
the pack first, and I went to the door, and opened it, and stood there
listening and looking out into the night. UGH! they went near. I could
hear the hoofs of the caribou. And then I heard a great cry, a voice
that rose above the howl of the wolves like the voice of ten men, and I
knew that Bram Johnson was on the trail of meat. MON DIEU--yes--he is
alive. And that is not all. No. No. That is not all--"
His fingers were twitching. For the third or fourth time in the last
three-quarters of an hour Raine saw him fighting back a strange
excitement. His own incredulity was gone. He was beginning to believe
Pierre.
"And after that--you saw him?"
"Yes. I would not do again what I did then for all the foxes between
the Athabasca and the Bay, M'sieu. It must have been--I don't know
what. It dragged me out into the night. I followed. I found the trail
of the wolves, and I found the snowshoe tracks of a man. Oui. I still
followed. I came close to the kill, with the wind in my face, and I
could hear the snapping of jaws and the rending of flesh--yes--yes--AND
A MAN'S TERRIBLE LAUGH! If the wind had shifted--if that pack of
devils' souls had caught the smell of me--tonnerre de dieu!" He
shuddered, and the knuckles of his fingers snapped as he clenched and
unclenched his hands. "But I stayed there, M'sieu, half buried in a
snow dune. They went on after a long time. It was so dark I could not
see them. I went to the kill then, and--yes, he had carried away the
two hind quarters of the caribou. It was a bull, too, and heavy. I
followed--clean across that strip of Barren down to the timber, and it
was there that Bram built himself the fire. I could see him then, and I
swear by the Blessed Virgin that it was Bram! Long ago, before he
killed the man, he came twice to my cabin--and he had not changed. And
around him, in the fire-glow, the wolves huddled. It was then that I
came to my reason. I could see him fondling them. I could see their
gleaming fangs. Yes, I could HEAR their bodies, and he was talking to
them and laughing with them through his great beard--and I turned and
fled back to the cabin, running so swiftly that even the wolves would
have had trouble in catching me. And that--that--WAS NOT ALL!"
Again his fingers were clenching and unclenching as he stared at Raine.
"You believe me, M'sieu?"
Philip nodded.
"It seems impossible. And yet--you could not have been dreaming,
Pierre."
Breault drew a deep breath of satisfaction, and half rose to his feet.
"And you will believe me if I tell you the rest?"
"Yes."
Swiftly Pierre went to his bunk and returned with the caribou skin
pouch in which he carried his flint and steel and fire material for the
trail.
"The next day I went back, M'sieu," he said, seating himself again
opposite Philip. "Bram and his wolves were gone. He had slept in a
shelter of spruce boughs. And--and--par les mille cornes du diable if
he had even brushed the snow out! His great moccasin tracks were all
about among the tracks of the wolves, and they were big as the spoor of
a monster bear. I searched everywhere for something that he might have
left, and I found--at last--a rabbit snare."
Pierre Breault's eyes, and not his words--and the curious twisting and
interlocking of his long slim fingers about the caribou-skin bag in his
hand stirred Philip with the thrill of a tense and mysterious
anticipation, and as he waited, uttering no word, Pierre's fingers
opened the sack, and he said:
"A rabbit snare, M'sieu, which had dropped from his pocket into the
snow--"
In another moment he had given it into Philip's hands. The oil lamp was
hung straight above them. Its light flooded the table between them, and
from Philip's lips, as he stared at the snare, there broke a gasp of
amazement. Pierre had expected that cry. He had at first been
disbelieved; now his face burned with triumph. It seemed, for a space,
as if Philip had ceased breathing. He stared--stared--while the light
from above him scintillated on the thing he held. It was a snare. There
could be no doubt of that. It was almost a yard in length, with the
curious Chippewyan loop at one end and the double-knot at the other.
The amazing thing about it was that it was made of a woman's golden
hair.