It was a bad winter. In the gray fishing village at the mouth of the Natashquouan came word to Wind-in-the-Night that certain of the scattered bands of his tribe in the interior were near to starving. He had been now some six months absent from home, guiding a party of prospectors, and his heart was troubled with desire for the little, lonely cluster of lodges on the shore of the Michikamaw. He thought of his own spacious wigwam of birch bark, with the crossed poles projecting above the roof. With a pang of solicitude, he thought of the comely and kindly young squaw, his wife, and of that straight-limbed, copper-colored little five-year-old, his son, whose dark eyes danced like the sunlight on the ripples, and who would always run laughing to meet him and clutch him by the knees so sturdily.
Wind-in-the-Night wondered if they were hungry. Was it possible that there could be fear and famine in that far-off wigwam deep in the snows, while he, here under the white man's roof, was warm and well fed? With smoldering eyes and no explanations, he resigned his profitable post and started inland, on his snowshoes, with a toboggan load of pemmican and flour. The men of the village, pipe in hand, and weary-eyed with their winter inactivity, looked after him from their doorways and shook their heads.
"He'll never make the Michikamaw with that there load," muttered one.
"It's the wolves'll be gittin' the load an' him too!" growled another.
Another spat tobacco juice into the snow in a sort of resigned derision. Then all closed their doors tight against the deathly cold, huddled up to their stoves, and dreamed grumblingly of spring. The solitary figure bending to the straps of his toboggan never looked back. His thoughts were all on the distant wigwam of birch bark and the woman and child within it, who might be hungry.
Once across the bleak ridge which overlooked the settlement, Wind-in-the-Night was swallowed up in the untamed, untouched Labrador wilderness—everywhere a confusion of low hills, bowl-like valleys, and spruce forests up-thrusting their dark, pointed tops above the enormous overlay of the snow. Wind-in-the-Night swung on with a long, loping, bent-kneed, straight-footed stride, his immense, racquet-like snowshoes settling into the snow at each step with a curious muffled sigh that had small resemblance to any other sound on earth.
He chose his path unhesitatingly, picking up his landmarks without conscious effort among hill-tops and valleys and ravines which to the uninitiated eye must have all looked alike. Just before noon he halted, lit a fire, made himself a kettle of tea after the comforting fashion he had learned from the white men, and chewed a rocky morsel of pemmican without taking time to cook it. Then he pushed on eagerly.
The shadows began to fall early in that latitude; and as they began to fall, Wind-in-the-Night began glancing from time to time over his shoulder. He did it half-unconsciously, so absorbed was he in his thoughts. At last he caught himself at it, as it were, and for a moment wondered what he did it for. The next instant, with a little tingling at the nape of his neck—just where, on a dog or a moose, the hair stiffens at such moments—he understood.
He felt that he was being followed.
His path was the open, snow-sheeted channel of a little river, with the fir woods crowding down to its brink on either side. Wind-in-the-Night halted and peered into the thickets with eyes trained and penetrating, but he could distinguish nothing. He listened, but there was not a sound in all that lifeless world, save a ghostly settling of the snow somewhere behind him. He sniffed the air, but his nostrils could detect no taint upon it. He pushed on again, and immediately he felt in his spine, in his hair, that the depths of the forest, to right and to left, were full of moving life.