wrestling with the mystery, as his dog whined and fretted beside him, then turned into his blankets.
The next morning he was swinging up the hard-packed river-trail behind his sled thinking of the hot dinner awaiting him at the shack, when the dog stopped, sniffed in the snow, then turned sharply off the trail, upsetting the sled. Running up, Hertel found the husky nosing huge tracks which crossed the sled-trail at right angles.
"Ah-hah! De Weendigo travel here, eh?" he exclaimed, studying the footprints. They were shaped somewhat like bear-tracks, with deep indentations of long claws, but larger than any bear-tracks he had ever seen, and, besides, bear were holed up for the winter. What beast, then, could have made that trail?
In the mental make-up of Hertel there was no trace of superstition. But the emotional Marie was keenly susceptible to the supernatural, and it was of her that he thought as he examined this strange trail in the snow. This thing must be kept from his wife if he wished to finish the winter in the valley.
As he shuffled through the soft snow beside the trail, one characteristic of the footprints was at once marked by his trained eyes—their shallowness. Despite his tracks, the beast was not heavy or he would have sunk deeper into the snow. Then, from the looks of the trail, he did not pick up his feet; he was a slow and lumbering traveller. The impulse to follow the tracks, run the beast down on snow-shoes with his dog, and have it out with his 30-30 was strong in the hunter; but it meant another night away from Marie,
