“Monsieur Moses et moi, we have purty hard times in wilderness widout doze pillars,” he said.
The Lad and I gave a nervous laugh. I could not fancy myself personally conducting forty thousand Hebrews, even through Wildyrie, without much assistance.
“Yaas,” he said, “purty hard. I now begin.”
And begin he did, slowly and with his quaint talk seasoned with his habitant French, which I'll have to omit in my retelling.
“It was a night just like this, in my little cabin on Wolf River. It had rained and then frozen, and the dark closed in with sleet. A very good night to be indoors, thought ole Pierre and I. Ole Pierre was my best friend, an old husky, who had been trapping with me four—five years. He knew all that men know, I think, as well as all that dogs understand, and he could smell a werewolf in the twilight.”
“A werewolf, what's that?” was on the very opening of the Lad's lips, but he held back the question.
“A werewolf, you know,” went on Prunier, “is worse than real wolf, for it is in the air—a ghost-wolf. That is why ole Pierre sometimes howled in his sleep and kept her from visiting us. That is why I put a candle in the window every dusk-time. As you shall see, it was lucky habit.
“Eh bien, that night I was sorting over my traps, for I thought it would turn cold after the storm. Then I would cross Breknek Place and begin the winter's trapping.
“Breknek Place is its name, because the sides of Wolf River come very close together, almost so near a man can jump. Indeed its name is really because a trapper like me was surprised by the wolves and ran for it. But he was too scared, and missed. They never got his body, the wolves, because the river runs so fast down to the Smoky Pool. Smoky Pool is a warm cove in the St. Lawrence that freezes last, and from which clouds of vapor rise on still days into the colder air.
“I never intended to be washed down that way, and in the summer I felled a tree from bank to bank, a broad hemlock, big enough to run a sledge over, almost; and that save many miles walking up river to Portage du Loup. I never intended, either, to be run by the wolves, you bet! And ole Pierre and I were pretty-very careful to be inside at the candle-lighting time.