VI
French Louie crossed the deep ravine and threw his three victims down side by side. He laughed at them, jeered them, and insulted them.
"By gar!" he growled. "Yo' fellers make me tired! Three two-dollaire skin,an' yo' make a bigger load dan forty mink, wort' free hundert dollaire! By gar! A man a tam fool, lug yo' fellers aroun'! By gar!"
French Louie cursed and blackguarded the wolves that he killed with fond emphasis and joyous exultation. Every time he killed a wolf he regarded it as a victory, a compliment to his own skill, a relief for his pent-in feelings.
To hear him talk, taking no notice of his triumphant tone, one would have supposed that wolves were the least worthy of his pursuits, that he obtained them by accident, and that his real efforts were concentrated on worth-while creatures—mink, marten, fisher, lynx, and the like. The fact was that French Louie would neglect all other game for the pleasure of circumventing a wolf, even if it were only an ignorant wolf-pup.
So French Louie drew out his skinning-knife, lamenting that he had to dull its blade on the coarse fibers of a hairy wolf-skin. He stripped the hides off as if he detested that work more than anything else in the world. All the way home to his main camp on Otter Bay he grumbled and cursed and shook his shaggy head, complaining about lugging such a heavy load for so small a recompense as the value of the skins and the government reward.
"By gar! A li'l' marten, one I put in my pocket, wort' more dan all dis backbreaker load!" he growled.
Nevertheless, when he had stretched his wolf-skins on great hoops, fleshed them, and hung them up under his fur-shed, he looked at them long and admiringly.
"By gar!" he grumbled. "By gar! Der is some satisfact' to keel sooch tam nuisances. By gar! Dat's right, ole feller!"
Some satisfaction? Why, if French Louie had to trap in a country where there were no wolves he would feel that he was like a little boy running up and down a brook across the middle of a farm. Not bears, nor lynx, nor fisher, nor foxes could bring one-half the pleasure to him that he found in "foolin' dem tam old wolfs!"
He did not content himself with merely hunting for wolves. He set traps for them. He had more wolf-traps in proportion to his line than any other trapper. His monkeying with mink, marten, muskrats, was strictly for commercial reasons. He liked the five dollars which a nice little black Canadian mink brought him. He was exuberant over a twenty-dollar stone-marten. He would dance a step or two when he ran into a lynx, especially when it was sitting quiet, not pulling a bit at a No. 1 mink-trap. Next to wolves he regarded a captured fisher with pleasure, because a fisher always tore up his trap cubbies and chewed everything in reach.
"By gar! Yo' tam fisher, yo' tam pekan! Yo' make a feller work! By gar! Yo' son of a goon! I feex yo'!" he would say, grimacing and jumping and growling, for he liked a fighting pekan.
Foxes he did not know what to think of. He despised them, and yet they surprised him with their little tricks. He would call a fox a muskrat, just to insult him, and then he would call him next brother to a wolf. Sometimes a fox would display great spirit, and again one would show no more judgment or heart than a rabbit.
His joy was great as he saw more and more that he was in a land of wolves. Wolves evidently dominated this country, just as rabbits or deer or foxes or skunks dominate the wild life of certain other localities.
"By gar! I do belief dat I foun' my wolf-pocket at las'!" French Louie grimaced and danced. "Wolfs—wolfs—wolfs! Everywhere is dem wolfs! By gar! Come deep snow, an' dem fellers get hongry—by gar! I bet dem tam wolfs like to set deir teeths into dem tough bones an' muscles dat I got! By gar! Wat dey miss in fat, I bet dey take op in consolation dat it's me! Well, I won't let no tam wolfs drive me out. Too mooch mink, too goot marten, fisher, fox, muskrats aroun'! By gar!"
Let the wolves drive him out? French Louie wouldn't have left that country if he didn't find a mink, a marten, or any other sign than that of wolves. All other trapping was to him as nothing, if he could not trap for wolves. Back on Pigeon River wolves had grown so scarce that he could hardly see a track there—and he would have stopped trapping altogether, if he had not found the country north and east of Otter Cove.
Wolves were not just wolves to French Louie. After he killed the three wolf-pups—seven or eight months old, perhaps ten months—the one that got away was an individual to him. The survivor held his hind legs in such a way that his hind paws turned in ever so little.
"By gar! Yo' knock-kneed li'l' scoundrel!" the old trapper growled. "W'at yo' t'ink I am? Yo' get away from me, eh? By gar!"
Two days later he was twenty miles back on his line, between two wigwams, when he stopped beside a Stillwater on Twin Falls River. At the outlet of the Stillwater was a bar of fine, white sand. In the sand was the track of a wolf that had stopped there to drink.
"By gar! Yo' knock-kneed son of a goon!" he cried. "Yo' coom 'way back here to trouble me? I show yo', by gar! I feex yo'!"
Knock Knee and Two Toes thus became personalities to French Louie.
"Dat scoundrel Swaller River gang!" he went on. "By gar! Dem's bad eggs, an' I bet dey make a beeg combamba nex' February, when dey get hongry! By gar! I bettaire go back to Coldwell for February! Dat's right! I ain' no business aroun' when dem Swaller River fellers coom roonin' aroun', eatin' op me an' anyt'ing else dey want! By gar!"
Knock Knee traveled alone for weeks. He was a lost and lonely soul in the green timber. The snow which soon covered the ground to a depth of a few inches showed his tracks wandering far through the woods, without a fixed range or a hole that he could call his own.
He turned back from the tracks of other wolves. He hunted rabbits and grouse alone. He followed the runways of moose, and he looked back often, as if he feared the very shadows of the moon that was shining.
"By gar!" French Louie shook his head, after following the track of Knock Knee for an hour or two, just to see what he was up to. "By gar! Now ain' a wolf a funny tam feller? How yo' goin' to tell what a feller like dat Knock Knee goin' to do nex'? By gar! Dat feller sly like a cat! He lay down an' wait fer a rabbit to coom to heem, by gar! Dat's w'at he do! He don' waste himse'f, runnin' his tam laigs off; he get fat, waitin' fer somet'ing to eat, by gar! Dat's Knock Knee!"
The snow told French Louie what the wild life of his range was doing. He could read the tracks of many animals in the sand and mud and moss, but now he had a plainly printed page to reveal everything that went on in the woods. The very dust of the tree-bark told him of the grouse that roosted in the branches, and of the squirrel runways along limbs above the snow. As for the hog-wallowing trail of a porcupine, or the graceful traceries of ermine and deer mice and fox-trails—French Louie had so much reading to do that he could hardly contain himself for delight.
Just imagine having five thousand square miles of library page, reprinted every day or two, and continued in our next—stories told and never read, and stories told and read, by the hundred!
Two Toes and his band distinguished themselves by appearing on Swallow River, at the head of Twin Falls River, and down at the mouth of Pukaso, on the same snow in three days. The other wolf-packs might remain in their own territory, like home bodies, but not Two Toes.
"By gar! Dat feller is one tam old boy to get dar! Some day dat feller get et up by dem other fellers! Dey ain' likely glad to have so many aroun' huntin' meat off what dey want demselfs. If dey want to eat one another out of everyt'ing, w'y, let 'em! Bimeby dey all get together an' raise trouble, anyhow, dey will! Beeg old pack run together, an' chase—mebby dey chase me all aroun' an' op a tree! By gar! I bet I don' forget my li'l' shoot-pistol, no, by gar! I need dat pistol, I bet. Goot t'ing I didn't forget dat pistol. Twenty-two bait-gun not hurt a wolf. By gar! I wan' a gun dat shoots ten times ten, by gar! Fust t'ing I know, I have a hunder' wolfs chasin' me like a tam lynx all over dem woods. By gar! I bet I squawk ef dem fellers bit my ham! I bet I would, for a fact! By gar!"
French Louie squawked before he was bitten. He had three traps set along the top of a low ridge, for fisher, about three miles out from his first wigwam. Upon reaching the first of the three, he found just the torn paw of a fisher dangling from the trap, which swung on the well-sweep pole.
He looked at the snow, and there was a wolf-track—unmistakably the track of Two Toes. In spite of the smell of steel, Two Toes had pulled the fisher out and carried it back to his waiting crew, and then the pack had pulled it to pieces and eaten it.
"Dat—dat tam scoundrel! By gar! Steal my fisher!-twenty dollaire! More dan four wolfs is wort'! By gar!"
At the next trap the well-sweep pole was pulled clear out of the fork, and a fisher had been torn up and eaten.
French Louie squawked and danced up and down in the snow.
"There! By gar! I was a tam fool to leave Pigeon River. Now I suffer from dem tam wolfs. By gar!"