Shortly the noiseless night was marred by a sobbing moan, as if some stricken creature writhed under the torture of mangled flesh.
Marcel knew that neither wolf, lynx, nor wolverine—the "Injun-devil" of the superstitious—was responsible for the sound. What could it be? he queried. No furred prowler of the night, and he knew the varied voices of them all, had such a muffled cry. Puzzled and curious he left his rabbit-skin robes and stood with the terrified Michel beside the fire. In an uproar, the dogs ran into the "bush" with manes bristling and bared fangs, to hurl the husky challenge down the valley at the invisible menace.
"Eet ees de Windigo! Dey tell me at Whale Riviere not to come een dees countree! De Windigo an' Matchi Manito ees loose here," whimpered Michel through chattering teeth.
Jean Marcel did not know what it was that made night horrible with its moaning but he intended to learn at once. The lungs behind that noise could be pierced by rifle bullet and the cold steel of his knife. There was not a creature in the north with which Fleur would not readily battle. He would soon learn if the hide of a Windigo was tough enough to turn the knife-like fangs of Fleur, and the bullets of his 30-30.
Seizing Michel by the shoulders he shook the boy roughly.
"I tell you, Michel, de devil dat mak' dat soun' travel on four feet. You tie up de pup an' wait here. Fleur an' I go an' breeng back hees skin."
But the panic-stricken Michel would not be left alone, and when he had fastened the excited puppies, with shaking hands he drew his rifle from its skin case and joined Marcel.
Holding with difficulty on her rawhide leash the aroused Fleur leaping ahead in the soft footing, Marcel snow-shoed through the timber in the direction from which the sound had come.
After travelling some time they stopped to listen.
From somewhere ahead, seemingly but a few hundred yards down the valley, floated the eerie sobbing. Michel's gun slipped to the snow from his palsied hands.