The next morning was a beautiful one, and amid laughter, cheers and au r’voirs the Montaignis left the post, bound for home, two hundred and thirty miles away to the northwest. Tritou accompanied them with his big sledge and ten dogs. As he went out of the gate Le Grand called to him, “Gare Jules Verbaux!” and Tritou scowled.
Day after day the party travelled on across miles of deep timber and long stretches of barrens where the wind bit fiercely and the frost patched their faces with gray. Night after night they camped, built big fires, and curled up round them in their blankets, and all the time Tritou was sullen and spoke rarely to his companions. One day, when travelling over soft crust in single file, the man’s sled just in front of Tritou’s upset, and the load scattered over the snow. Tritou never offered to help him reload, but made a detour to avoid the accident, and kept on in silence. These things were noticed by the Montaignis, and they began to wonder what sort of man was this who wouldn’t talk, who wouldn’t even smoke with them by the fire in the evenings. Mutterings were frequent among the Indians about it, and at last suspicion was openly talked of in their own language, which Tritou did not understand. They suspected him of being a Company spy, and one of them went so far as to tell him so in halting, broken French. Tritou made no answer, and the Indians grew uglier toward him.
On the sixth day out from the post, the chief, who was in the lead, suddenly stopped and examined some tracks which crossed their course; the others gathered about and jabbered excitedly. Tritou noticed the unusual commotion from his place in the rear, and came up to find out the cause. He saw the strange, wide snow-shoe trail, and his eyes glistened venomously; but still he said nothing. That night, when the party made camp, he was missing. No one had seen him leave, and conjectures were many and loud.
The chief listened to them all, and decided that they had better not do anything about it; that Tritou had gone of his own volition, and that it was his affair, not theirs. “He has probably turned back to the post,” he said; so the next day the Montaignis went on without him.
Tritou had at once recognised the snow-shoe trail as that of Verbaux, and when he dropped back to his position in the line, he determined to leave the Montaignis secretly at the first opportunity, go back, pick up the trail and follow it to its maker. The Indians’ course took them through a wooded ravine; Tritou saw it a long way off, and he dropped back little by little, intending to leave the others when they turned the ravine corner at the upper end. It happened as he planned; the others kept on steadily, and he slowed up until there was five hundred yards between him and the last of his travelling companions.
When the ravine was reached they all went up through it, turned the corner, and Tritou stopped his team, threw himself on the sledge and lashed the dogs. They bounded forward, and he was soon out of hearing of the Indians’ voices, going back to his enemy’s trail. It was only five miles off, and Tritou soon covered that distance, for he was going very fast.
“Ah-ha-a-a! at las’, Verbaux!” he said hoarsely when he came to the tracks again, “Ah goin’ keel you dees taime!”
Before starting on the chase he lashed the load firmly on the sledge, filled his rifle with cartridges, and looked to the dogs’ harness; then, with everything secured he started on the trail. The country was entirely strange to him, as this was two hundred and ten miles from the post, and he had never hunted in this direction. It was all hills and valleys; the timber was thick, and the hillsides steep; his advance, therefore, was slow. The wide tracks led due north; over hill and through valley, up ravines and across barrens it went, straight as a compass course. It was at least a day old, Tritou decided; and he coaxed the dogs to their best efforts. The tracks led over a high, bare hill, and he stopped to look about. He could see a long, long way ahead, but as far as his eyes could reach were barrens on barrens, white and desolate; not a living thing in sight on the snow or in the air.
The sun shone over the glare-crust with dazzling brilliancy, and he could not look on it long. “Mush!” he shouted to the dogs, and went on. The trail kept its northern course, straight over the barrens and down through the deep timber on the far side; always a day old it seemed to Tritou, fast as he went. The dogs were lagging; he stopped to feed them, and ate some cold food himself. He did not dare to light a fire for fear of warning the man he was after. In an hour he started on again. The landscape changed. He came to a big lake, where ice was black and deep, and where the cutting wind made him shiver and draw his muffler close. He lost the trail here, but remembering Jules’s old tricks, he went across the ice in a northern direction and found that the tracks began again on the other side.
It was coming twilight; the sun was sinking; it grew colder, and Tritou saw that he should not get up on Verbaux that night. He travelled as long as he could see the tracks before him; then he lay down among the dogs, and slept.