The Golden Snare, James Oliver Curwood [read any book .txt] 📗

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.


CHAPTER III
The process of mental induction occasionally does not pause to reason its way, but leaps to an immediate and startling finality, which, by reason of its very suddenness, is for a space like the shock of a sudden blow. After that one gasp of amazement Philip made no sound. He spoke no word to Pierre. In a sudden lull of the wind sweeping over the cabin the ticking of his watch was like the beating of a tiny drum. Then, slowly, his eyes rose from the silken thread in his fingers and met Pierre's. Each knew what the other was thinking. If the hair had been black. If it had been brown. Even had it been of the coarse red of the blond Eskimo of the upper Mackenzie! But it was gold--shimmering gold.
Still without speaking, Philip drew a knife from his pocket and cut the shining thread above the second knot, and worked at the finely wrought weaving of the silken filaments until a tress of hair, crinkled and waving, lay on the table before them. If he had possessed a doubt, it was gone now. He could not remember where he had ever seen just that colored gold in a woman's hair. Probably he had, at one time or another. It was not red gold. It possessed no coppery shades and lights as it rippled there in the lamp glow. It was flaxen, and like spun silk--so fine that, as he looked at it, he marveled at the patience that had woven it into a snare. Again he looked at Pierre. The same question was in their eyes.
"It must be--that Bram has a woman with him," said Pierre.
"It must be," said Philip. "Or--"
That final word, its voiceless significance, the inflection which Philip gave to it as he gazed at Pierre, stood for the one tremendous question which, for a space, possessed the mind of each. Pierre shrugged his shoulders. He could not answer it. And as he shrugged his shoulders he shivered, and at a sudden blast of the wind against the cabin door he turned quickly, as though he thought the blow might have been struck by a human hand.
"Diable!" he cried, recovering himself, his white teeth flashing a smile at Philip. "It has made me nervous--what I saw there in the light of the campfire, M'sieu. Bram, and his wolves, and THAT!"
He nodded at the shimmering strands.
"You have never seen hair the color of this, Pierre?"
"Non. In all my life--not once."
"And yet you have seen white women at Fort Churchill, at York Factory, at Lac la Biche, at Cumberland House, and Norway House, and at Fort Albany?"
"Ah-h-h, and at many other places, M'sieu. At God's Lake, at Lac Seul, and over on the Mackenzie--and never have I seen hair on a woman like that."
"And Bram has never been out of the northland, never farther south than Fort Chippewyan that we know of," said Philip. "It makes one shiver, eh, Pierre? It makes one think of--WHAT? Can't you answer? Isn't it in your mind?"
French and Cree were mixed half and half in Pierre's blood. The pupils of his eyes dilated as he met Philip's steady gaze.
"It makes one think," he replied uneasily, "of the chasse-galere and the loup-garou, and--and--almost makes one believe. I am not superstitious, M'sieu--non--non--I am not superstitious," he cried still more uneasily. "But many strange things are told about Bram and his wolves;--that he has sold his soul to the devil, and can travel through the air, and that he can change himself into the form of a wolf at will. There are those who have heard him singing the Chanson de Voyageur to the howling of his wolves away up in the sky. I have seen them, and talked with them, and over on the McLeod I saw a whole tribe making incantation because they had seen Bram and his wolves building themselves a conjuror's house in the heart of a thunder-cloud. So--is it strange that he should snare rabbits with, a woman's hair?"
"And change black into the color of the sun?" added Philip, falling purposely into the other's humor.
"If the rest is true--"
Pierre did not finish. He caught himself, swallowing hard, as though a lump had risen in his throat, and for a moment or two Philip saw him fighting with himself, struggling with the age-old superstitions which had flared up for an instant like a powder-flash. His jaws tightened, and he threw back his head.
"But those stories are NOT true, M'sieu," he added in a repressed voice. "That is why I showed you the snare. Bram Johnson is not dead. He is alive. And there is a woman with him, or--"
"Or--"
The same thought was in their eyes again. And again neither gave voice to it. Carefully Philip was gathering up the strands of hair, winding them about his forefinger, and placing them afterward in a leather wallet which he took from his pocket. Then, quite casually, he loaded his pipe and lighted it. He went to the door, opened it, and for a few moments stood listening to the screech of the wind over the Barren. Pierre, still seated at the table, watched him attentively. Philip's mind was made up when he closed the door and faced the half-breed again.
"It is three hundred miles from here to Fort Churchill," he said. "Half way, at the lower end of Jesuche Lake, MacVeigh and his patrol have made their headquarters. If I go after Bram, Pierre, I must first make certain of getting a message to MacVeigh, and he will see that it gets to Fort Churchill. Can you leave your foxes and poison-baits and your deadfalls long enough for that?"
A moment Pierre hesitated.
Then he said:
"I will take the message."
Until late that night Philip sat up writing his report. He had started out to run down a band of Indian thieves. More important business had crossed his trail, and he explained the whole matter to Superintendent Fitzgerald, commanding "M" Division at Fort Churchill. He told Pierre Breault's story as he had heard it. He gave his reasons for believing it, and that Bram Johnson, three times a murderer, was alive. He asked that another man be sent after the Indians, and explained, as nearly as he could, the direction he would take in his pursuit of Bram.
When the report was finished and sealed he had omitted just one thing.
Not a word had he written about the rabbit snare woven from a woman's hair.


CHAPTER IV
The next morning the tail of the storm was still sweeping bitterly over the edge of the Barren, but Philip set out, with Pierre Breault as his guide, for the place where the half-breed had seen Bram Johnson and his wolves in camp. Three days had passed since that exciting night, and when they arrived at the spot where Bram had slept the spruce shelter was half buried in a windrow of the hard, shot like snow that the blizzard had rolled in off the open spaces.
From this point Pierre marked off accurately the direction Bram had taken the morning after the hunt, and Philip drew the point of his compass to the now invisible trail. Almost instantly he drew his conclusion.
"Bram is keeping to the scrub timber along the edge of the Barren," he said to Pierre. "That is where I shall follow. You might add that much to what I have written to MacVeigh. But about the snare, Pierre Breault, say not a word. Do you understand? If he is a loup-garou man, and weaves golden hairs out of the winds--"
"I will say nothing, M'sieu," shuddered Pierre.
They shook hands, and parted in silence. Philip set his face to the west, and a few moments later, looking back, he could no longer see Pierre. For an hour after that he was oppressed by the feeling that he was voluntarily taking a desperate chance. For reasons which he had arrived at during the night he had left his dogs and sledge with Pierre, and was traveling light. In his forty-pound pack, fitted snugly to his shoulders, were a three pound silk service-tent that was impervious to the fiercest wind, and an equal weight of cooking utensils. The rest of his burden, outside of his rifle, his Colt's revolver and his ammunition, was made up of rations, so much of which was scientifically compressed into dehydrated and powder form that he carried on his back, in a matter of thirty pounds, food sufficient for a month if he provided his meat on the trail. The chief article