The wind still blew a gale, a bitterly cold gale from the north, and even the little bay was too rough for travel. Icy snow lay several inches deep in the woods and loaded the evergreens. All that day the three searched the woods and ridges for game, but obtained nothing but a squirrel and two blue jays. There was little indeed to the jays, once their feathers were off. Nangotook put them into the bark pot with the squirrel, and added a handful of hazelnuts and some tubers he had dug, which he called “bear potatoes.” The resulting broth was hot and comforting, if not a very nourishing meal for three starved men.
All the next day the wind continued to blow so hard that the canoe could not be launched or the net set, but Nangotook and Jean went through the woods and over the ridges to the trout stream, and caught good strings of fish. The soup of the night before had made Ronald, in his half starved condition, ill, and he was so weak and coughed so hard that the Indian bade him remain in camp and keep warm and dry.
In spite of the cold wind, the snow had melted rapidly where the sun reached it, and had softened in the woods. By that night the rocks and open places were bare again. The hunters scanned the softened snow eagerly for tracks, but found no signs of hare or caribou, nothing but a few squirrel prints.
All three slept soundly that night, after their meal of broiled trout. By morning the wind had gone down and the waves had subsided so that the canoe could be launched. The voyageurs put out from shore at once. After setting their net in a favorable place, they tried line fishing. While paddling around a group of three small islands that lay in a direct line with the point, they caught two good lake trout. They promptly decided to go ashore, and have breakfast at once. So many rocks sprinkled the water about the islands that they were difficult to approach. A safe landing was made, however, on a shelving rock beach, near an upright heap of boulders with bushes projecting from cracks and crannies.
While Jean was cleaning the fish, Etienne and Ronald, seeking for fire-wood, rounded the heap of rocks, and came suddenly on the remains of a camp. Branches slanted against the rock formed a rude shelter, and near it were the ashes of a fire. Glancing down at the blackened embers, Ronald touched with the toe of his moccasin a charred bone.
“Those fellows had more meat than we’ve seen lately,” he said. “They must have killed a caribou.”
The Indian was staring down at the bone. He stooped and picked it up, examined it a moment, and then held it out to Ronald.
“No addick ever had bone like that,” he said.
“What was it then, a moose?” asked the boy, holding out his hand for it. As he looked at it, his expression of curiosity changed to horror. He glanced up at Nangotook, and saw his own feelings reflected on the Ojibwa’s face. “The leg bone of a man,” the lad said chokingly.
Nangotook nodded, then glanced behind him swiftly, as if expecting to see some evil thing creeping up on him. “Windigo,” he said significantly. It was the name for the mythical, man-eating giants that figure in Ojibwa and other Algonquian legends, a name the Indians have extended to apply to all cannibals or men driven by starvation to feed on other human beings.