As Mooswa tramped down the wide roadbed of frozen river, Francois, up at The Landing, was doing very much as the Bull Moose had feared.
He had weathered the blizzard, lying huddled up with his dogs in the shelter of a cut-bank, not daring to stir even for food till the fury of the icy blast had pa.s.sed. He had even come to The Landing with a full resolve to go back immediately after he had secured his outfit; alas!
for the carrying out of it, he was but an easily influenced Half-breed.
At The Landing were several of his own kind down from Little Slave Lake with the first kill of Winter fur. With these the possession of money or goods always meant an opportunity for gambling.
Francois had a "debt credit" at the Hudson"s Bay Company"s store equal to the value of his needs; any Trapper who has kept his slate clean in the Company"s accounts can usually get credit for a small outfit.
When the Half-breed had completed his purchase, the Factor tossed him a large plug of smoking tobacco, which was the usual terminal act of a deal in goods in any of the Company"s posts.
Francois filled his pipe, sat down by the hot box-stove with its roaring fire of dry Poplar-wood, and smoked, and spat, and dilated upon the severity of the blizzard, and regaled the other occupants of the Trading Post with stories of Wolverine"s depredations. Suddenly he ceased speaking, held the pipe in his hand hesitatingly, and straightened his head up in a listening att.i.tude. The deep, sonorous, monotonous "tum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tum" of a gambling outfit"s drum-music came sleepily to his acute listening ear. It was like a blast from the huntsman"s horn to a fox-hound; it tingled in his blood, and sent a longing creeping through his veins.
"There goes that Nichie outfit from Slave Lake again," cried the Factor, angrily. "They"ve gambled for three nights; if the police were here I"d have a stop put to it."
Francois tried to close his ears to the coaxing, throbbing, skin-covered tambourine the gambling party"s music-maker was hammering that still, frosty night; but his hearing only became acuter, for it centred more and more on the thing he was trying to keep from his mind. Even the "Huh, huh!--huh, huh!--huh, huh!--huh, huh!" of the half-dozen Indians who sat about a blazing camp-fire, and rocked their bodies and swayed their arms in rhythmic time, came to him with malevolent fascination.
"I t"ink me I go sleep," Francois said, knocking the ashes from his pipe, and putting it in his bead-worked deerskin fire-bag.
"You"d better pull out sharp in the morning," commanded the Factor; "young McGregor will be running short of grub before you get back."
"I roun" up ever" t"ing to-night," returned Francois, "an" hit de trail firs" t"ing in de mornin", soor. I make me de S"ack in t"ree day."
Outside, the "Tum-tum" called to him; the "Huh, huh!" pleaded with him like the voice of a siren. He would go and sit by their fire just for a little, the Breed reasoned--not play! for more than once he had been stripped to his very shirt when luck set against him. True, other times he had acc.u.mulated furs, and dogs, and guns, even the caribou-skin coats, and Cow-boy hats--fine valuable hats worth ten dollars a piece,--when fortune smiled and he had guessed unerringly in which hand his opponent-player had hidden the cartridge sh.e.l.l, or whatever other token they used.
"Huh-huh! Francois! Huh, Boy--Welcome!" went round the circle of squatting figures when the Half-breed stood amongst them. The musician stopped beating his instrument; solemnly each player and onlooker held out a hand and gave Francois one sharp jerk of greeting. Two rows of men sat facing each other, a big blanket over their knees; room was made for the new arrival.
"S"pose I not gamble to-night me," said Francois, hesitatingly.
They laughed in astonishment--doubtingly.
"S"pose you "fraid you lose, Man-who-saves-his-money," cried a Saltaux Indian, disdainfully.
Now a Breed or an Indian must not be accused of being afraid of anything; if he be, and submit to it, he is undone for all time. Half their bravery is due to this same moral cowardice. Francois hesitated, and the others, ignoring him, drew the blanket over their knees; the player secreted the tokens, and drawing forth his hands crossed his arms, always waving them in rhythmic time to the tum-tum. Then the Man-who-guesses in the opposite party indicated with his fingers where he thought the tokens were hidden.
It wasn"t in human blood to stand out against this thing--not generations of gambler blood, and Francois cried, half fiercely: "Make room, Brothers! We"ll see who"s afraid."
That was the beginning. In the end, which came toward daylight, Francois had neither grub-stake, nor rifle, nor train-dogs. Time after time he took in exchange for some a.s.set a little bundle of Red-willow counter sticks; time after time the little sticks, some long and some short, dwindled until they were all gone. The evil fate that had been his down at the trapping stuck to him in gambling.
Broken, and half numbed by loss of sleep and a sense of impending disaster, brought on by his despoiled condition, Francois crawled off to a friend"s tepee, laid down like a train-dog, and fell asleep.
MOOSWA BRINGS HELP TO THE BOY
Mile after mile Mooswa cut from the head-trail with his easy-swinging rack, the strong crust of frozen snow giving his great limbs free play.
The open bed of the river held just such a run as he liked: no tree branches to catch his huge horns, no fallen tree giving cover to a stalking Panther or strange Wolf Pack; and, as if to make his trip perfect, he was running up a North Wind. He was like a telegraph operator sitting at his clicking instrument with the wires telling him everything.
"A brother Moose crossed here, just a hundred yards ahead," the Wind whispered one time. "Wh-f-f-f-! it was a Bull, too," the scent-wind told his delicate nostrils. "Ugh-wh-e-e-e-f-f-! Sikak has crossed the trail here, and killed the strongest scent left by any other--disgusting little brute!" This message Mooswa took from the wind, and repeated to himself. For a mile his nostrils were simply stricken dumb by the foul odour; his nose told him nothing of other affairs.
Then for a matter of ten miles there was but the sweet breath of Spruce as the wind filtered through a long point covered with it. "Line clear,"
the frosty air signalled, as Mooswa, taking a straight course for the merging of dark green and river-white, raced eagerly.
At the "Second Rapid," where the float-ice had grounded on rock-boulders in the Autumn closing-time, the river bosom humped like a corduroy road.
"I must remember this spot on my coming back," Mooswa muttered, as he picked his way more slowly over the troubled ice-road. "Here I can make a big run if enemies are close," he added as a stretch of many miles reached away, level as a mill pond.
"Wolves! the Gray Hunters! the Murder Brothers who go in packs!" he said, as his quick-feeling nose picked their presence from the North Wind. "Not Rof"s Pack," he continued, sampling the scent a little finer--"Strangers!" and he watched warily, c.o.c.king his ears forward for a warning whimper.
"Huh! they"re busy!" for as he flashed over their cross-trail there arose the fainter odour of Caribou. "Safe journey, cousin," he muttered, "and confusion to the Throat-cutters. It"s the Meat-eating, the Blood-drinking," he philosophized, "that breeds all the enmity in the Boundaries. There are Gra.s.ses, and Leaves, and Flowers enough for all, and no encroachment, if we"d only stick to it; but eating one"s Comrades is what makes the trouble."
Just before daylight Mooswa stopped, climbed up a sloping bank warily, and ate a light breakfast; then slipped back to the river-bed, huddled up in the lee of a clay-cut, and after resting for two hours pushed on again. Another ten miles and he stopped like a flash, holding his head straight up wind, the coa.r.s.e, strong-growing hairs over his withers vibrating with intensity. "Sniff! sniff! Dogs! Man! Rof said nothing of Dogs. This makes it more complicated. It is the scent of White Men, and the Dog-smell is not that of Huskies. These Whites sometimes bring the long-legged creatures that follow us like Wolves."
He worked cautiously down the river till his eyes caught sight of a blue smoke-feather floating lazily upward.
Five or six short steps at a time, three or four yards he moved,--then stopped and watched with eyes, ears, nose, and all his full sensibility.
He knew the Man-trick of a flank movement--he must get them out on the river behind him; besides, there was now the stronger, more certain odour of Dogs.
He was perhaps a matter of half a mile from the little Shack above which twisted the spiral curl of smoke, when a fierce, strong-throated "Yap!
yap! Whe-e-e, yap!" cut the frosty air.
"I thought so," Mooswa muttered. "I know that breed--the fierce-fanged ones the Scotch Factor had at Fort Resolution--from his own Boundaries across the sea they came. They are like the Men themselves--on, on, rush and hold. Deep-chested, small-gutted as Caribou; with long legs that carry them over the snow like those of my own family; gray-haired and strong-jawed, like Blue Wolf: but weak in the feet--small-footed, with hair between their toes which b.a.l.l.s up in the snow and makes them go lame." Then Mooswa considered the task he had undertaken.
"If the Man slips the Dogs, and the snow keeps hard and dry, there will be more fighting than running," he said to himself, "for these brutes will come faster than I care to go. But there is a strong crust, strong enough to bear me, and if the sun warms the snow so that it will ball in the haired toes, then I"ll have a chance in the run. The Man moves," he continued, whiffing at the air. "Two of them!" he muttered, as their forms outlined against the morning sky; "Rof brought tidings of but one.
Now for it! I"m coming, Boy!"
He turned and walked slowly back on his track, breaking into a shuffling trot farther on.
In a few minutes the two men, snow-shoe clad, rifle in hand, and cartridge-belted, reappeared circling through the woods on the bank.
With one of them were four Scotch Stag-hounds in leash. Mooswa"s eyes took in the situation as he trotted, carrying his head a little to one side. "The flank movement," he muttered, "and a stolen shot at the next bend--they"ll not slip the Dogs while they have hope of a shot."
When the first river-bank point hid him from their sight he raced.
"They"re running now," he thought, for he was down wind from them, and the telegraph was working.
When the two hunters reached the belly of the next bend they saw a big Bull Moose quietly browsing at the point beyond. He was walking slowly, snipping at the tree branches as he moved.
"Keep the dogs back," one hunter said; "we are sure to get a quiet shot at him, for he"s on the feed."
Point after point, bend succeeding bend, Mooswa played this game; mile after mile they toiled, the tantalizing expectation of a stolen shot leading them an amazing distance on the Moose trail.
"It"s the Stag-hounds that keep him moving," remarked the man who had spoken before; "he"s down wind, and gets them in his big, fat nose--if I could rustle a shot into his carca.s.s, I"d slip them quick enough; but if we let them go now it will be a play of twenty or thirty miles before we get another sight of him. I"m not struck on following a Bull Moose under full trot with a pack of dogs behind him."
"We"ll get a shot on the quiet soon," remarked his comrade. "He is a bit on edge just now, but will settle down after he has seen us a few times." They had given up travelling in the bush, and were following straight on the hoof-marks in the river-bed.
"h.e.l.lo!" sang out one, pointing to a depression in the snow, "he"s been lying down resting here--he"s getting f.a.gged. Somebody else must have been running him before we struck his trail--he"s nearly beat."
As they crossed the Wolf trail Mooswa had found on his way down, the Trapper in the lead said, significantly, "It"s the Gray Hunters have done the Bull up; they"ve been after him, and he"s dead beat."