It was after the noonday halt of the next day that the Indian’s prophecy
of the coming snow was verified. All that morning they had pushed
feverishly along under sullen skies. Signs were not few that the chase
was drawing to a close. Old Joe’s examination of the man’s last
camp-fire convinced him that it was not more than a very short time
since the man had “moved on.”
Ominous slate-colored clouds began to roll up. There was a strange
stillness in the air, like but very different from the hush that
precedes a thunderstorm. They had about finished their noon snack when
the boys noticed the dogs beginning to sniff about uneasily, elevating
their noses and pacing up and down, giving from time to time short
yapping barks.
“Aha!” cried old Joe as he saw this, “zee snow, he come. Beeg snow, I
teenk. Malukes know. Boosh! It weel wipe out zee trail—bah!”
He knocked the ashes from his pipe disgustedly. The boys, in fact, felt
equal disappointment. It appeared that the forces of nature had leagued
themselves with their enemy. They pictured to themselves how the unknown
fugitive must be chuckling as he saw the signs of the approaching storm
which must obliterate his tracks.
“Are we going on?” asked Tom, as old Joe rose to his feet and looked
about him.
“Boosh! Non, mon garçon! It ees not well to travel in the snow. We must
camp. Dat is all dere is for us to do. Maybe he not be bad. But look
plenty bad now.”
“You mean to make camp, then?”
“Yes. Back by dose trees. Eet is good place. Zee wind is from zee nort’.
Zee trees hold zee dreeft, bon. Eet might have come in much worse
place.”
“Is the storm likely to last long?”
Joe Picquet gave one of his expressive shrugs.
“Maybe. Perhaps one day, maybe two, t’ree days. I do not know.”
Feeling rather low in spirits, the boys set about making a camp under
Joe’s directions. It was the same kind as the one in which they had
passed the night on a previous occasion. Great quantities of wood were
chopped, and from the way Joe kept eying the sky, the boys could see
that he was afraid the storm would be on them before they could get
everything in readiness.
The old man himself worked like a beaver. It would have seemed
impossible that a man of his age and apparently feeble frame could
perform so much work. But Old Joe Picquet was capable of doing a day’s
work with men of half his age, and the way he hustled about that camp
showed it.
The dogs were fed, but instead of fighting as usual, they devoured their
food in silence and then began looking about for places to burrow.
“Ah-ha! Mameluke, he know. He ver’ wise, all same one tree full of zee
owl,” declared old Joe, noting this.
At last all was finished and they were ready to face whatever the
weather was preparing to launch upon their heads. About three o’clock
the sky was full of tiny flakes which came through the still, silent air
with a steady, monotonous persistency that presaged a heavy downfall. By
night, which closed in early, the air was white with whirling flakes. It
was impossible to see more than a few feet.
“You see. She get worse before she get better,” declared Joe oracularly
as, after an early supper of jerked meat and hot tea, they sought their
blankets.
When morning came the worst of the storm was over. But what a scene!
Every landmark was obscured. Nothing met their eyes but a broad sheet of
unbroken snow. Every track was obliterated. Only some bumps in the snow,
like the hummocks over graves, showed where the mameluke dogs slept,
securely tucked in by a snowy blanket.
Joe shook his head despondently.
“Boosh! No good, dees!” he grumbled. “That rascal, he moost be most glad
to see. ‘Ha! Ha!’ he teenk to himself, ‘now I get away.’”
“I guess he’s dead right in that, too,” muttered Tom despondently.
“Courage! Mon garçon, we not geev up yet. We come long way get dees
fellow, we get him. Get breakfast, den we open trail. Joe Picquet know
dees country lak he know zee bumps in hees mattress.”
Soon afterward they took to their snowshoes, pressing forward over an
unbroken expanse of white. Both boys now wore old Joe’s bark “snow
glasses.” As for the old trapper himself, he had merely blackened his
eyes underneath with a burned stick to relieve the glare. It gave him an
odd and startling appearance, but it averted the danger of temporary
sightlessness.
“Dat beeg rascal, he have to keep to dees valley,” said Joe as they
pushed along. “No can get out till reach White Otter Lake. Maybe dere we
strike hees trail once more.”
Encouraged by this hope, they made good progress till noon, when old Joe
declared that they were within striking distance of White Otter Lake.
“But there he can take more than one road,” declared Tom, recalling what
Joe had said.
“Dat ees so. Two valley branch off dere, one to zee north, zee ozeer to
zee south.”
“Then it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Jack
disgustedly.
Old Joe looked up quickly.
“Maybe we find heem, maybe not,” he said; “all we can do is try. No good
get sore, mon garçon. Boosh!”
Jack looked rather abashed, but said nothing, and they went on again in
silence. Late in the afternoon, when near White Otter, they came upon
two Indians fishing through the ice. They had a decoy, one of the oddest
of its kind the boys had ever seen. It was a fish skin blown out like a
bladder and anchored at the edge of the ice. They seemed to have had
good luck, for a big pile of fish lay beside them.
Old Joe bought a good supply of these for the dogs, whose food was
beginning to run low. Then, after the usual palaver, the Indians were
asked about other passers along the trail. But they had not been there
long, they said. Their camp lay to the south. Since they had been
fishing they had seen no one.
The trapper paid for the fish, gave some of it at once to the dogs, and
then they went on again. It was a monotonous journey, trying to the body
and the spirits. A silence, tragic, gloomy and sinister hung over
everything. Although the snow had ceased and the sky was clear, the
going was heavy and tiring, and the uncertainty of picking up the
thief’s trail again added to their depression.
But the silence did not always hang heavy, brooding and unshattered.
From time to time a cry like the scream of a banshee would split the
air, startling the boys, used as they were to it. The cry was that of
the hunters of the north, the gaunt, gray rangers of the wilds—the
wolves.