III
Casimir was dangerously ill. His appetite was gone and his limbs seemed paralyzed. There came rumors that a famous Cree doctor was visiting the Chipewyan of a nearby settlement, and Pierre was dispatched to lure him to Fort Hearne with promise of fabulous fees. The Cree consented. He was a garrulous old man and on their joint trip Pierre tried to sound him about his powers, but on that subject he was mum. “You will see,” he answered, and Pierre was obliged to wait.
When they arrived at the Fort, the medicine man erected a little booth and had himself thrust in, with his hands and feet firmly tied. He sang his incantations and the lodge began to shake. It seemed filled with strange beings, for unearthly sounds were heard, followed by a death-like silence. Opening the lodge they saw the conjuror unbound, and as if awakening from a trance. He proclaimed that the spirits had visited him and declared that Casimir would recover. Next, the patient himself was stretched out in the booth and the doctor entered it, stripped stark naked. He knelt and sang and blew at Casimir’s heart, sucked at his breasts, and talked as if with his guardian spirits. Then he swallowed a stick three feet long, and retched it up again, announcing that all was well. In sooth, Casimir was carried from the tent clamoring for food, and in a week he was able to walk about. Then his kin showered gifts on the great magician, and all the other Indians sought to curry favor with him by every manner of attention.
Pierre was less ostentatious than others in his entertainment of the old sage, but sometimes when the rest were fast asleep he would steal to the conjuror’s tent with liquor and tobacco, to ply him with questions about the magic art. And after a while his host’s reticence waned. He even confessed to having bewitched a rival by drawing his image on the ground with an arrow pointed at his heart. Yet when Pierre hinted that he, too, had a strong enemy on whom he would fain cast a spell, the old fox hedged and said that sorcery was a dangerous business. Some men had power of their own, and could hurl the evil charm back with redoubled force against the sorcerer. Besides, he himself was old and wanted to live his few years in peace.
When Pierre found it hopeless to make the Cree bewitch his master, he changed his tactics. What was the truth about the Windigo? He had heard his mother tell about them, but did they really exist? That proved a less delicate subject for the medicine man. He himself had never seen a Windigo, but he knew all about them from another conjuror. Yes, the Windigo were dangerous spirits and fearfully strong. How strong? Surely no stronger than the factor? Why, they would rend him asunder like a dry twig. They swooped down upon men to tear out their vitals, and played ball with their skulls. There was a way to gain their favor, but it was very hard. If one fasted for three or four days in a wood they haunted, and freely offered them of one’s flesh, they were pleased and might adopt him as their child. True, they were likely to swallow the sufferer whole, but when they spewed him out he was like one of themselves ever after, fierce and cannibalistic. The other Indians had better keep a wide berth of such as these, or placate them by gifts lest they break loose and destroy every one in sight. And now Pierre himself recalled a gaunt man who had terrorized the camp of his childhood, and whose bare glance had thrown timid folk into convulsions.
Pierre slipped home and sat musing for a long time. Should he tempt the spirits of the woods? Would they answer his prayer? What if they ate him before he could make his offering? Yet, why should he live? He had lost Louise; and her captor was master of Fort Hearne. Life mattered not, unless the Windigo chose to bless him.
The next day he entered the wood he had traversed with MacDonald that memorable evening. He ate not a morsel of food all day, and continued his fast next day, praying to the Windigo. At last he mustered up courage, gashed his chest with a big knife, and offered his body to the spirits. Then he fell down in a dead swoon. When he woke up, there was joy in his heart for all his pain. A Windigo had really come and blessed him! It had seized him as a boy seizes a moth, but when it saw the blood streaming from his breast it took pity on him, swallowed and disgorged him. Next spring he was to wreak vengeance as a Windigo. He must merely bide his time.
As he walked homeward, he exulted in his new powers. Why not try them for a joke? He, too, would show people his strength now. The first man he encountered he would terrify into fits. Yonder was Angus, mending a net in front of his tent. He would do as well as the next. Pierre quickly stepped up to him, and assuming a ferocious grimace, he cried, “I am Windigo! I have come to eat you!”
But Angus burst into a guffaw, “You a Windigo! You, who never hurt a fly! You are crazy. You’ve been drinking. Go home and sleep it off!” Pierre slunk home like a whipped cur, and threw himself on his bed crestfallen and humiliated. The Windigo had blessed him, yet he could not be Windigo. It was not in him. Even the Windigo could help only men like MacDonald. Thus he lay in impotent grief till exhaustion brought sleep. Then the Windigo loomed in sight and whispered, “In the spring, fool! I said, in the spring!”