The Sun of Quebec: A Story of a Great Crisis

by Joseph A. Altsheler

Tandakora lay quiet with his warriors, while night came and its darkness grew, and he listened for the sound of men on the trail. Instead he heard the weird, desolate cry of an owl to his left, and then the equally lone and desolate cry of another to his right. But the warriors still lay quiet. They had heard owls often and were not afraid of them. Then the cry came from the north, and now it was repeated from the south. There was a surfeit of owls, very much too many of them, and they called to one another too much. Tandakora did not like it. It was almost like a visitation of evil spirits. Those weird, long-drawn cries, singularly piercing on a still night, were bad omens. Some of his warriors stirred and became uneasy, but Tandakora quieted them sternly and promised that the Bostonnais would soon be along. Hope aroused again, the men plucked up courage and resumed their patient waiting.

Then the cry of the panther, long drawn, wailing like the shriek of a woman, came from the east and the west, and presently from the north and the south also, followed soon by the dreadful hooting of the owls, and then by the fierce growls of the bear. Tandakora, in spite of himself, in spite of his undoubted courage, in spite of his vast experience in the forest, shuddered. The darkness was certainly full of wicked spirits, and they were seeking prey. So many owls and bears and panthers could not be abroad at once in a circle about him. But Tandakora shook himself and resolved to stand fast. He encouraged his warriors, who were already showing signs of fright, and refused to let any one go.

But the forest chorus grew. Tandakora heard the gobble of the wild turkey as he used to hear it in his native west, only he was sure that the gobble now was made by a spirit and not by a real turkey. Then the owl hooted, the panther shrieked and the bear growled. The cry of a moose, not any moose at all, as Tandakora well knew, but the foul emanation of a wicked spirit, came, merely to be succeeded by the weird cries of night birds which the Ojibway chief had never seen, and of which he had never dreamed. He knew, though, that they must be hideous, misshapen creatures. But he still stood fast, although all of his warriors were eager to go, and the demon chorus came nearer and nearer, multiplying its cries, and adding to the strange notes of birds the equally strange notes of animals, worse even than the growl of bear or shriek of panther.

Tandakora knew now that the wicked spirits of earth and air were abroad in greater numbers than he had ever known before. They fairly swarmed all about him and his warriors, continually coming closer and closer and making dire threats. The night was particularly suited to them. The heavy black clouds floating before the moon and stars were met by thick mists and vapors that fairly oozed out of the damp earth. It was an evil night, full of spells and magic, and the moment came when the chief wished he was in his own hunting grounds far to the west by the greatest of the Great Lakes.

The darkness was not too great for him to see several of his warriors trembling and he rebuked them fiercely, though his own nerves, tough as they were, were becoming frayed and uneasy. He forgot to watch the trail and listen for the sound of footsteps. All his attention was centered upon that horrible and circling chorus of sound. The Bostonnais might come and pass and he would not see them. He went into the forest a little way, trying to persuade himself that they were really persecuted by animals. He would find one of these annoying panthers or bears and shoot it, or he would not even hesitate to send a bullet through an owl on a bough, but he saw nothing, and, as he went back to his warriors, a hideous snapping and barking of wolves followed him.

The note of the wolf had not been present hitherto in the demon chorus, but now it predominated. What it lacked in the earliness of coming it made up in the vigor of arrival. It had in it all the human qualities, that is, the wicked or menacing ones—hunger, derision, revenge, desire for blood and threat of death. Tandakora, veteran of a hundred battles, one of the fiercest warriors that ever ranged the woods, shook. His blood turned to water, ice water at that, and the bones of his gigantic frame seemed to crumble. He knew, as all the Indians knew, that the souls of dead warriors, usually those who had been wicked in life, dwelled for a while in the bodies of animals, preferably those of wolves, and the wolves about him were certainly inhabited by the worst warriors that had ever lived. In every growl and snap and bark there was a threat. He could hear it, and he knew it was meant for him. But what he feared most of all was the deadly whine with which growl, snap and bark alike ended. Perspiration stood out on his face, but he could not afford to show fear to his men, and, retreating slowly, he rejoined them. He would make no more explorations in the haunted wood that lay all about them.

As the chief went back to his men the snarling and snapping of the demon wolves distinctly expressed laughter, derision of the most sinister kind. They were not only threatening him, they were laughing at him, and his bones continued to crumble through sheer weakness and fear. It was not worth while for him to fire at any of the sounds. The bullet might go through a wolf, but it would not hurt him, it would merely increase his ferocity and make him all the more hungry for the blood of Tandakora.

The band pressed close together as the wolves growled and snapped all about them, but the warriors still saw nothing. How could they see anything when such wolves had the power of making themselves invisible? But their claws would tear and their teeth would rend just the same when they sprang upon their victims, and now they were coming so close that they might make a spring, the prodigious kind of spring that a demon wolf could make.

It was more than Tandakora and his warriors could stand. Human beings, white or red, they would fight, but not the wicked and powerful spirits of earth and air which were now closing down upon them. The chief could resist no longer. He uttered a great howl of fear, which was taken up and repeated in a huge chorus by his warriors. Then, and by the same impulse, they burst from the thicket, rushed into St. Luc's trail and sped northward at an amazing pace.

Tayoga, Willet and Robert emerged from the woods, lay down in the trail and panted for breath.