The wind moaned outside, and then rose to a shriek. He sprang up and looked wildly about him. It was the shriek of a damned soul! No, he had been dozing and it was only a dream, and he lay back trembling.
For a long while he could not go to sleep again. Fear had taken absolute and complete possession of him—the fear of the eternal damnation that the missionary had so vividly pictured. It was a picture that had been received at the time without being seen and through all these years had remained in his brain, covered and hidden. This day's work had suddenly and for the first time drawn aside the screen and left it bare before his eyes displaying to him every fearful minute outline. He was a murderer and he would be punished. There was no thought of repentance for sins committed—only fear of a fate that he shrunk from but which confronted him as a reality and a certainty—as great a certainty as his rising in the morning and so near at hand. He got up and looked out. The wind blew clouds of snow into his face. He could not see the tree that he knew was ten feet away. It was an awful night for a man to be out without shelter.
Micmac John lay down again and after a time the tired brain and body yielded to nature and he slept.
The instincts of the half-breed, keen even in slumber, felt rather than heard the diminishing of wind and snow as the storm subsided with the approach of morning, and he arose at once. The rest had quieted his nerves, and he was the stolid, revengeful Indian again. After a meagre breakfast of tea and jerked venison he took down the tent and lashed the things securely upon the toboggan and ere the first stars began to glimmer through the cloud rifts he was hurrying away in the stillness of the night.
When the sky finally cleared and the moon came out, cold and brilliant, there was something uncanny and weird in its light lying upon earth's white shroud rent here and there by long, dark shadows across the trail. There was an indefinable mystery in the atmosphere. Micmac John, accustomed as he was to the wilderness, felt an uneasiness in his soul, the reflex perhaps of the previous night's awakening, that he could not quite throw off—a sense of impending danger—of a calamity about to happen. The trees became mighty men ready to strike at him as he approached and behind every bush crouched a waiting enemy. His guilty conscience was at work. The little spirit that God had placed within his bosom, to tell him when he was doing wrong, was not quite dead.
He increased his speed as daylight approached travelling almost at a run. Suddenly he stopped to listen. From somewhere in the distance behind him a wolf cry broke the morning silence. In a little while there were more wolf cries, and they were coming nearer and nearer. The animals were doubtless following some quarry. Was it Bob they were after? A momentary qualm at the thought was quickly replaced by a feeling of satisfaction. That, he tried to argue with himself, would cover every clue to what had happened and was what he had hoped for. He hurried on.
All at once a spasm of fear brought him to a halt. Could it be himself the wolves were trailing! The old horror of the night came back with all its reality and force. A clammy sweat broke out upon his body. He looked wildly about him for a retreat, but there was none. The wolves were gaining upon him rapidly and were very close now. There was no longer any doubt that he was their quarry. They were trailing him. Micmac John was in a narrow, open marsh, and the wolves were already at the edge of the woods that skirted it a hundred yards behind. A little distance ahead of him was a big boulder, and he ran for it. At that moment the pack came into view. He stopped and stood paralyzed until they were within thirty yards of him, then he turned mechanically, from force of habit, and fired at the leader, which fell. This held them in check for an instant and roused him to action. He grabbed an axe from the toboggan and had time to gain the rock and take a stand with his back against it.
As the animals rushed upon the half breed he swung the axe and split the head of one. This temporarily repulsed them. He held them at bay for a time, swinging his axe at every attempted approach. They formed themselves into a half circle just beyond his reach, snapping and snarling at him and showing their ugly fangs. Another big gray creature, bolder than the rest, made a rush, but the swinging axe split its head, just as it had the others. They retreated a few paces, but they were not to be kept back for long. Micmac John knew that his end had come. His face was drawn and terrified, and in spite of the fearful cold and biting frost, perspiration stood out upon his forehead.
It was broad daylight now. Another wolf attacked from the front and fell under the axe. A little longer they parleyed. They were gradually growing more bold and narrowing the circle—coming so close that they were almost within reach of the swinging weapon. Finally a wolf on the right, and one on the left, charged at the same time, and in an instant those in front, as though acting upon a prearranged signal, closed in, and the pack became one snarling, fighting, clamouring mass.
When the sun broke over the eastern horizon a little later it looked upon a circle of flat-tramped, blood-stained snow, over which were scattered bare picked human bones and pieces of torn clothing. A pack of wolves trotted leisurely away over the marsh.