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from Old Man Savarin Stories:
Tales of Canada and Canadians (1917 ed.)
TORONTO :: :: :: S.B. Gundy
PUBLISHER IN CANADA FOR HUMPHREY MILFORD
BIG Baptiste Seguin, on snow-shoes nearly six feet long, strode mightily out of the forest, and gazed across the treeless valley ahead.
"Hooraw! No choppin' for two mile!" he shouted.
"Hooraw! Bully! Hi-yi!" yelled the axemen, Pierre, "Jawnny" and "Frawce," two hundred yards behind. Their cries were taken up by the two chain-bearers still farther back.
"It is a lake, Baptiste?" cried Tom Dunscombe, the young surveyor, as he hurried forward through balsams that edged the woods and concealed the open space from those among the trees.
"No, seh; only a beaver meddy."
"Clean?"
"Clean! Yesseh! Clean's your face. Hain't no tree for two mile if de line is go right."
"Good! We shall make seven miles to-day,"
said Tom as he came forward with immense strides, carrying a
compass and Jacob's-staff. Behind him the axemen slashed
along, striking white slivers from the pink and scaly
columns of red pines that shot up a hundred and twenty feet
without a branch. If any underbrush grew there, it was
beneath the eight-feet Our young surveyor took no thought of the
beauty and majesty of the forest he was leaving. His
thoughts and those of his men were set solely on getting
ahead; for all hands had been promised double pay for their
whole winter, in case they succeeded in running a line round
the disputed Moose Lake timber berth before the tenth of
April.
Their success would secure the claim of
their employer, Old Dan McEachran, whereas their failure
would submit him perhaps to the loss of the limit, and
certainly to a costly lawsuit with Old Rory Carmichael,
another potentate of the Upper Ottawa.
At least six weeks more of fair
snow-shoeing would be needed to "blaze" out the limit, even
if the unknown country before them should turn out to be
less broken by cedar swamps and high precipices than they
feared. A few days' thaw with rain would make slush of the
eight feet of snow, and compel the party either to keep in
camp or risk mal de raquette, Tom thrust his Jacob's-staff into the snow,
set the compass sights to the right bearing, looked through
them, and stood by to let Big Baptiste get a course along
the line ahead. Baptiste's duty was to walk straight for
some selected object far away on the line. In woodland the
axeman "blazed" trees on both sides of his snow-shoe track.
Baptiste was as expert at his job as any
Indian, and indeed he looked as if he had a streak of
Iroquois in his veins. So did "Frawce," "Jawnny," and all
their comrades of the party.
"The three pines will do," said Tom, as
Baptiste crouched.
"Good luck to-day for sure!" cried
Baptiste, rising with his eyes fixed on three pines in the
foreground of the distant timbered ridge. He saw that the
line did indeed run clear of trees for two miles along one
side of the long, narrow beaver meadow or swale.
Baptiste drew a deep breath, and grinned
agreeably at Tom Dunscombe.
"De boys will look like dey's all got de
double pay in deys' pocket when dey's see dis
open," said Baptiste, and started for the three pines as
straight as a bee.
Tom waited to get from the chainmen the
distance to the edge of the wood. They came on the heels of
the axemen, and all capered on their snow-shoes to see so
long a space free from cutting.
It was now two o'clock; they had marched
with forty pound or "light" packs since daylight, lunching
on cold pork and hard-tack as they worked; they had slept
cold for weeks on brush under an open tent pitched over a
hole in the snow; they must live this life of hardship and
huge work for six weeks longer, but they hoped to get twice
their usual eighty-cents But Big Baptiste, now two hundred yards in
advance, swinging along in full view of the party, stopped
with a scared cry. They saw him look to the left and to the
right, and over his shoulder behind, like a man who expects
mortal attack from a near but unknown quarter.
"What's the matter?" shouted Tom.
Baptiste went forward a few steps,
hesitated, stopped, turned, and fairly ran back toward the
party. As he came he continually turned his head from side
to side as if expecting to see some dreadful thing
following.
The men behind Tom stopped. Their faces
were blanched. They looked, too, from side to side.
"Halt, Mr. Tom, halt! Oh, monjee,
M'sieu, stop!" said Jawnny.
Tom looked around at his men, amazed at
their faces of mysterious terror.
"What on earth has happened?" cried he.
Instead of answering, the men simply
pointed to Big Baptiste, who was soon within twenty yards.
"What is the trouble, Baptiste?" asked Tom.
Baptiste's face was the hue of death. As he
spoke he shuddered:--
"Monjee, Mr. Tom, we'll got for
stop de job!"
"Stop the job! Are you crazy?"
"If you'll not b'lieve what I told, den you
go'n' see for you'se'f."
"What is it?"
"De track, seh."
"What track? Wolves?"
"If it was only wolfs!"
"Confound you! can't you say what it is?"
"Ee's de--it ain't safe for told its name
out loud, for dass de way it come--if it's call by its
name!"
"Windego, eh?" said Tom, laughing.
"I'll know its track jus' as quick's I see
it."
"Do you mean you have seen a Windego
track?"
"Monjee, seh, don't say
its name! Let us go back," said Jawnny. "Baptiste was at
Madores' shanty with us when it took Hermidas Dubois."
"Yesseh. That's de way I'll come for know
de track soon's I see it," said Baptiste. "Before den I mos'
don' b'lieve dere was any of it. But ain't it take Hermidas
Dubois only last New Year's?"
"That was all nonsense about Dubois. I'll
bet it was a joke to scare you all."
"Who's kill a man for a joke?" said
Baptiste.
"Did you see Hermidas Dubois killed? Did
you see him dead? No! I heard all about it. All you know is
that he went away on New Year's morning, when the rest of
the men were too scared to leave the shanty, because some
one said there was a Windego track outside."
"Hermidas never come back!"
"I'll bet he went away home. You'll find
him at Saint Agathe in the spring. You can't be such fools
as to believe in Windegos."
"Don't you say dat name some more!" yelled
Big Baptiste, now fierce with fright. "Hain't I just seen de
track? I'm go'n' back, me, if I don't get a copper of pay
for de whole winter!"
"Wait a little now, Baptiste," said Tom,
alarmed lest his party should desert him and the job. "I'll
soon find out what's at the bottom of the track."
"Dere is blood at de bottom--I seen it!"
said Baptiste.
"Well, you wait till I go and see
it."
"No! I go back, me," said Baptiste, and
started up the slope with the others at his heels.
"Halt! Stop there! Halt, you fools! Don't
you understand that if there was any such monster it would
as easily catch you in one place as another?"
The men went on. Tom took another tone.
"Boys, look here! I say, you are going to
desert me like cowards?"
"Hain't goin' for desert you, Mr. Tom, no
seh!" said Baptiste, halting. "Honly I'll hain' go for cross
de track." They all faced round.
Tom was acquainted with a considerable
number of Windego superstitions.
"There's no danger unless it's a fresh
track," he said. "Perhaps it's an old one."
"Fresh made dis mornin'," said Baptiste.
"Well, wait till I go and see it. You're
all right, you know, if you don't cross it. Isn't that the
idea?"
"No, seh. Mr. Humphreys told Madore 'bout
dat. Eef somebody cross de track and don't never come back,
den de magic ain't in de track no more. But it's
watchin', watchin' all round to catch somebody what cross
its track; and if nobody don't cross its track and get
catched, den de--de Ting mebby get crazy mad, and
nobody don' know what it's goin' for do. Kill every person
mebby."
Tom mused over this information. These men
had all been in Madore's shanty; Madore was under Red Dick
Humphreys; Red Dick was Rory Carmichael's head foreman; he
had sworn to stop the survey by hook or by crook, and this
vow had been made after Tom had hired his gang from among
those scared away from Madore's shanty. Tom thought he began
to understand the situation.
"Just wait a bit, boys," he said, and
started.
"You ain't surely go'n' for cross de
track?" cried Baptiste.
"Not now, anyway," said Tom. "But wait till
I see it."
When he reached the mysterious track it
surprised him so greatly that he easily forgave Baptiste's
fears.
If a giant having ill-shaped feet as long
as Tom's snow-shoes had passed by in moccasins, the main
features of the indentations might have been produced. But
the marks were no deeper in the snow than if the huge
moccasins had been worn by an ordinary man. They were about
five and a half feet apart from centres, a stride that no
human legs could take at a walking pace.
Moreover, there were on the snow none of
the dragging marks of striding; the gigantic feet had
apparently been lifted straight up clear of the snow, and
put straight down.
Strangest of all, at the front of each
print were five narrow holes which suggested that the
mysterious creature had travelled with bare, claw-like toes.
An irregular drip or squirt of blood went along the middle
of the indentations! Nevertheless, the whole thing seemed of
human devising.
This track, Tom reflected, was consistent
with the Indian
superstition that Windegos are monsters who
take on or relinquish the human form, and vary their size at
pleasure. He perceived that he must bring the maker of those
tracks promptly to book, or suffer his men to desert the
survey, and cost him his whole winter's work, besides making
him a laughing stock in the settlements.
The young fellow made his decision
instantly. After feeling for his match-box and sheath-knife,
he took his hatchet from his sash, and called to the men.
"Go into camp and wait for me!"
Then he set off alongside of the mysterious
track at his best pace. It came out of a tangle of alders to
the west, and went into such another tangle about a quarter
of a mile to the east. Tom went east. The men watched him
with horror.
"He's got crazy, looking at de track," said
Big Baptiste, "for that's the way,--one is enchanted,--he
must follow."
"He was a good boss," said Jawnny, sadly.
As the young fellow disappeared in the
alders the men looked at one another with a certain shame.
Not a sound except the sough of pines from the neighboring
forest was heard. Though the sun was sinking in clear blue,
the aspect of the wilderness, gray and white and severe,
touched the impressionable men with deeper melancholy. They
felt lonely, masterless, mean.
"He was a good boss," said Jawnny again.
"Tort Dieu!" cried Baptiste,
leaping to his feet. "It's a shame for desert the young
boss. I don't care; the Windego can only kill me. I'm going
for help Mr. Tom."
"Me also," said Jawnny.
Then all wished to go. But after some
parley it was agreed that the others should wait for the
portageurs, who were likely to be two miles behind, and make
camp for the night.
Soon Baptiste and Jawnny, each with his
axe, started diagonally across the swale, and entered the
alders on Tom's track.
It took them twenty yards through the
alders, to the edge of a warm spring or marsh about fifty
yards wide. This open, shallow water was completely
encircled by alders that came down to its very edge. Tom's
snow-shoe track joined the track of the mysterious monster
for the first time on the edge--and there both vanished!
Baptiste and Jawnny looked at the place
with the wildest terror, and without even thinking to search
the deeply indented opposite edges of the little pool for a
reappearance of the tracks, fled back to the party. It was
just as Red Dick Humphreys had said; just as they had always
heard. Tom, like Hermidas Dubois, appeared to have vanished
from existence the moment he stepped on the Windego track!
The dimness of early evening was in the
red-pine forest through which Tom's party had passed early
in the afternoon, and the belated portageurs were tramping
along the line. A man with a red head had been long
crouching in some cedar bushes to the east of the "blazed"
cutting. When he had watched the portageurs pass out of
sight, he stepped over upon their track, and followed it a
short distance.
A few minutes later a young fellow, over
six feet high, who strongly resembled Tom Dunscombe,
followed the red-headed man.
The stranger, suddenly catching sight of a
flame far away ahead on the edge of the beaver meadow,
stopped and fairly hugged himself.
"Camped, by jiminy! I knowed I'd fetch
'em," was the only remark he made.
"I wish Big Baptiste could see that Windego
laugh," thought Tom Dunscombe, concealed behind a tree.
After reflecting a few moments, the
red-headed man, a wiry little fellow, went forward till he
came to where an old pine had recently fallen across the
track. There he kicked off his snow-shoes, picked them up,
ran along the trunk, jumped into the snow from among the
branches, put on his snow-shoes, and started northwestward.
His new track could not be seen from the survey line.
But Tom had beheld and understood the
purpose of the manuvre. He made straight for the head
of the fallen tree, got on the stranger's tracks and
cautiously followed them, keeping far enough behind to be
out of hearing or sight.
The red-headed stranger went toward the
wood out of which the mysterious track of the morning had
come. When he had reached the little brush-camp in which he
had slept the previous night, he made a small fire, put a
small tin pot on it, boiled some tea, broiled a venison
steak, ate his supper, had several good laughs, took a long
smoke, rolled himself round and round in his blanket, and
went to sleep.
Hours passed before Tom ventured to crawl
forward and peer into the brush camp. The red-headed man was
lying on his face, as is the custom of many woodsmen. His
capuchin cap covered his red head.
Tom Dunscombe took off his own long sash.
When the red-headed man woke up he found that some one
was on his back, holding his head firmly down.
Unable to extricate his arms or legs from
his blankets, the red-headed man began to utter fearful
threats. Tom said not one word, but diligently wound his
sash round his prisoner's head, shoulders, and arms.
He then rose, took the red-headed man's own
"tump-line," a leather strap about twelve feet long,
which tapered from the middle to both ends, tied this firmly
round the angry live mummy, and left him lying on his face.
Then, collecting his prisoner's axe,
snow-shoes, provisions, and tin pail, Tom started with them
back along the Windego track for camp.
Big Baptiste and his comrades had supped
too full of fears to go to sleep. They had built an enormous
fire, because Windegos are reported, in Indian circles, to
share with wild beasts the dread of flames and brands. Tom
stole quietly to within fifty yards of the camp, and
suddenly shouted in unearthly fashion. The men sprang up,
quaking.
"It's the Windego!" screamed Jawnny.
"You silly fools!" said Tom, coming
forward. "Don't you know my voice? Am I a Windego?"
"It's the Windego, for sure; it's took the
shape of Mr. Tom, after eatin' him," cried Big Baptiste.
Tom laughed so uproariously at this that
the other men scouted the idea, though it was quite in
keeping with their information concerning Windegos' habits.
Then Tom came in and gave a full and
particular account of the Windego's pursuit, capture, and
present predicament.
"But how'd he make de track?" they asked.
"He had two big old snow-shoes, stuffed
with spruce tips underneath, and covered with dressed
deerskin. He had cut off the back ends of them, You shall
see them to-morrow. I found them down yonder where he had
left them after crossing the warm spring. He had five bits
of sharp round wood going down in front of them. He must
have stood on them one after the other, and lifted the back
one every time with the pole he carried. I've got that, too.
The blood was from a deer he had run down and killed in the
snow. He carried the blood in his tin pail, and sprinkled it
behind him. He must have run out our line long ago with a
compass, so he knew where it would go. But come, let us go
and see if it's Red Dick Humphreys."
Red Dick proved to be the prisoner. He had
become quite philosophic while waiting for his captor to
come back. When unbound he grinned pleasantly, and remarked:
"You're Mr. Dunscombe, eh? Well, you're a
smart young feller, Mr. Dunscombe. There ain't another man
on the Ottaway that could 'a' done that trick on me. Old Dan
McEachran will make your fortun' for this, and I don't
begrudge it. You're a man--that's so. If ever I hear any
feller saying to the contrayry he's got to lick Red Dick
Humphreys."
And he told them the particulars of his
practical joke in making a Windego track round Madore's
shanty.
"Hermidas Dubois?--oh, he's all right,"
said Red Dick. "He's at home at St. Agathe. Man, he helped
me to fix up that Windego track at Madore's; but, by
criminy! the look of it scared him so he wouldn't cross it
himself. It was a holy terror!"
(End.)