Turning, Jean gripped the boy's arm.
"Why you come? You no good to shoot. De Windigo eat you w'ile you hunt for your gun."
Picking up the rifle, the boy threw off the mittens fastened to his sleeve by thongs, and gritting his teeth, followed Marcel and Fleur.
Shortly they stopped again to listen. Straight ahead through the spruce the moaning rose and fell. Fleur, frantic to reach the mysterious enemy, plunged forward dragging Marcel, followed by the quaking boy who held his cocked rifle in readiness for the rush of beast or devil. Passing through scrub, a small clearing opened up before them. Checking Fleur, Marcel peered through the dim light of the forest into the opening lit by the stars, when the clearing echoed with the uncanny sound.
Marcel's keen eyes strained across the star-lit snow into the murk beyond, as Michel gasped in his ears:
"By Gar! I see noding dere! Eet ees de Windigo for sure!"
But the Frenchman was staring fixedly at a clump of spruce on the opposite edge of the opening. As the unearthly sobbing rose again into the night, he loosed the maddened dog and followed.
They were close to the spruce, when a great gray shape suddenly rose from the snow directly in their path. For an instant a pair of pale wings flapped wildly in their faces. Then a squawk of terror was smothered as the fangs of Fleur struck at the feathered shape of a huge snowy owl. A wrench of the dog's powerful neck, and the ghostly hunter of the northern nights had made his last patrol, victim of his own curiosity.
With a loud laugh Jean turned to the dazed Michel:
"Tak' good look at de Windigo, Michel. My fox trap hold heem fas' w'ile he seeng to de star."