Verbaux travelled on and on across the wilderness of silence and of space. He heard nothing but the howling of the wolves, saw nothing but colourless barrens, dark green timber depths, and frozen waters. He came at last to the clearing by Lac des Sables, and built up his wrecked home. It took him two days to finish the work, and two more to catch the dogs he had turned loose to shift for themselves sixteen days gone.
It was evening; a cheery fire crackled on the little hearth. The interior shone warm and comfortable in its glow, but the log walls were gray and bare instead of warm and brown with skins as they used to be. Jules sat before the fire; his eyes reflected the light dully and his thoughts were far away—where he knew not, but of whom he knew. The old heartbroken moan for Marie, Marie came from his lips, and he would start violently, as though dreaming, and shake his head. “Je suis content!” he muttered; tears came, nevertheless, and rolled slowly down the bronzed cheeks, dripping drop by drop and glistening on the rough shirt.
The yellow-red flames played noiselessly in the air, but their sources snapped and gave out tiny diamond sparks that died two inches from the place of birth. A storm was coming from the northeast. Little by little the wind increased in strength, first whispering, then sighing, then moaning fitfully by gusts, and finally shrieking through the millions of branches that are the forest. Jules heard but heeded not. The violent draft carried the smoke away in straight blue lines, the sparks had longer lives and disappeared in the wooden flue. A dog yelped, the others awoke and joined him, and their voices blended into one long minor clamour that sounded above the whistling wind, and cadenced with the now loud, then softer notes of the gale. A muffled roaring came down the little chimney; sometimes the powerful back draft imprisoned the smoke and it filled the hut with its pungent acrid smell. Dream figures appeared to Jules and passed in long review before his half-closed eyes. The very flames were distorted into living things that moved and, as he saw them, disappeared. He rose, went to the new bed of boughs, fell on it, and slept instantly. And in his vague, unrestful slumber the figures came and passed again before his brain.
“Traître!” he growled in his sleep; “Ah, Maquette, mon vieux, how ees, hein? An you, Bossu, an’ Hibou, mes camarades dat Ah sauve’!” The changeless voice shrilled then, and the long arms stretched out, “Petite! Marie!” He awoke, dazed, and heard the sobbing of the storm overhead. “Bon Dieu, grâce!” he said, and knelt by the bough bed, his face buried in his hands. He prayed, but always, even in his prayers, the squat, ugly figure of Manou with his treacherous eyes came before him; and much as the body cried out for the woman that lived somewhere under the broad expanse of God’s heavens, still the iron will and reason spoke through the pain-compressed lips and said, “Je suis content!” The fight was awful in its terrible fierceness; at last he sank, utterly exhausted, on the boughs and slept dreamlessly. The northern hurricane grew under the black skies; it lashed the trees until they groaned and snapped. As an accompaniment to the shrieking voices of the wind sounded the crashing reports of falling trees, here, there, everywhere. The two giant pines on each side of the hut moved to their foundations and twisted; their great roots heaved and tore the frozen sod beneath its white cover, and the walls of the camp trembled at each furious gust. And Verbaux slept on.
Long past its regular hour, the timid light of dawn appeared and broadened over the wild, tumultuous earth. By its light the flying masses of filmy clouds tore across the leaden skies. Sometimes a big black one came over the horizon and was whirled away over the lonely north at tremendous speed. Two sables came to the hut, pushed and buffeted by the gale, their tree home destroyed by the storm; they crept within the shelter of its lee side and curled up there together, hungry and frightened. The dogs howled at intervals, but their voices were almost lost in the heavy peals of the monstrous noises of the forest.
A gray shape came speeding past the hut, saw it, and stopped under its lee, disturbing the little sables. It was a tall caribou that stood there panting, its scarlet tongue dripping with foam, its great eyes drooping, its tired sides pumping air ceaselessly to satisfy the big lungs. And in a moment a dozen dark forms came and stood silently in a half-circle before the hut, breathing hoarsely, drool streaming from their open jaws. The wind pushed them about, but they stayed and watched. The dogs caught a whiff of the stench of wolves and set up a great cry in their shed, that sounded even above the hurricane. The dark forms listened, heard, recognised, and disappeared at once, wrapped in dim snow-clouds, through which their fleeing shapes appeared for an instant and were gone.
The caribou rested awhile, then faded away among the trees. Jules slept on, inert, on the boughs; the little sables cuddled closer together and were still.
More and more light came, and Verbaux awoke to another day. The weather remained the same, and he pulled his fur cap well down when he went out to the traps. Trees fell about him, broken branches dropped, rattling on the crust, great rents in the trunks of the hemlocks showed the fierce wrenching power of the wind. No living thing moved in the complaining, groaning forests, but Jules was happy in the chaos, and his loneliness and longing left him for a time. “By gar! Ah get beaucoup de poils!” he said. Every third trap held its dead prisoner. When he had finished the line, the load of furs on his back was heavy: eight sable, two lynx, three wolverine, four marten, and a gray fox.
He was on his way to the camp when suddenly, faint in the gale, he heard a voice calling “Holla, là-bas!” Then he saw coming toward him a short, broad figure on snow-shoes. The stranger came along easily, watching the trees that snapped and squeaked and bowed to their waists. Jules stopped and waited. “Bo’ jou’!” said the stranger in a friendly way. He was a French-Canadian, keen of eye, characteristic in face, strong in figure.
“Je suis Philippe Crevier. Ah comme two hunder’ mile’ look for un homme; you got fir’?”