Hertel knew he would overhaul it in the deep snow before the dusk, for, from the spacing and the depth of the tracks, the animal was travelling slowly. Twice it had stopped to rest, leaving an impression that baffled the woodcraft of the Frenchman. If he could only, for an instant, line up his rifle-sights on this robber, he, François Hertel, would give him a "bon-jour" of lead that would sicken him—evil spirit, Windigo, or furry thief—of the game of ruining the trapping of a Saint Maurice man.
Finally, in the afternoon, the trail led over the watershed ridges into a muskeg country to the south. The masked sun dipped behind western hills and dusk already hung in the thick timber, when the tracks brought weary man and dog to the edge of a wide barren. Shortly the swift northern night would close in, and he was already three hours' hard snow-shoeing from the shack.
With hood thrown back from his unbelted capote, while, even in the freezing air, the sweat coursed down the bold features, Hertel searched with narrowed eyes the silent reaches of the white barren, but in vain. He would have followed the trail deep into the moonlit night, camped on it, and taken it up at daylight, but he had promised to return to a woman who waited alone back in the valley. With a sigh he turned homeward with his dog.
In the days following he found his mink and otter traps on the streams around the headwater lakes unmolested, and reached the shack without again crossing the strange trail.
