CHAPTER IV
The next morning the tail of the storm was still sweeping bitterly overthe edge of the Barren, but Philip set out, with Pierre Breault as hisguide, for the place where the half-breed had seen Bram Johnson and hiswolves in camp. Three days had passed since that exciting night, andwhen they arrived at the spot where Bram had slept the spruce shelterwas half buried in a windrow of the hard, shot like snow that theblizzard had rolled in off the open spaces.
From this point Pierre marked off accurately the direction Bram hadtaken the morning after the hunt, and Philip drew the point of hiscompass to the now invisible trail. Almost instantly he drew hisconclusion.
"Bram is keeping to the scrub timber along the edge of the Barren," hesaid to Pierre. "That is where I shall follow. You might add that muchto what I have written to MacVeigh. But about the snare, PierreBreault, say not a word. Do you understand? If he is a loup-garou man,and weaves golden hairs out of the winds--"
"I will say nothing, M'sieu," shuddered Pierre.
They shook hands, and parted in silence. Philip set his face to thewest, and a few moments later, looking back, he could no longer seePierre. For an hour after that he was oppressed by the feeling that hewas voluntarily taking a desperate chance. For reasons which he hadarrived at during the night he had left his dogs and sledge withPierre, and was traveling light. In his forty-pound pack, fitted snuglyto his shoulders, were a three pound silk service-tent that wasimpervious to the fiercest wind, and an equal weight of cookingutensils. The rest of his burden, outside of his rifle, his Colt'srevolver and his ammunition, was made up of rations, so much of whichwas scientifically compressed into dehydrated and powder form that hecarried on his back, in a matter of thirty pounds, food sufficient fora month if he provided his meat on the trail. The chief article in thisprovision was fifteen pounds of flour; four dozen eggs he carried inone pound of egg powder; twenty-eight pounds of potatoes in four poundsof the dehydrated article; four pounds of onions in a quarter of apound of the concentration, and so on through the list.
He laughed a little grimly as he thought of this concentratedefficiency in the pack on his shoulders. In a curious sort of way itreminded him of other days, and he wondered what some of his old-timefriends would say if he could, by some magic endowment, assemble themhere for a feast on the trail. He wondered especially what MignonDavenport would say--and do. P-f-f-f! He could see the blue-bloodedhorror in her aristocratic face! That wind from over the Barren wouldcurdle the life in her veins. She would shrivel up and die. Heconsidered himself a fairly good judge in the matter, for once upon atime he thought that he was going to marry her. Strange why he shouldthink of her now, he told himself; but for all that he could not getrid of her for a time. And thinking of her, his mind traveled back intothe old days, even as he followed over the hidden trail of Bram.Undoubtedly a great many of his old friends had forgotten him. Fiveyears was a long time, and friendship in the set to which he belongedwas not famous for its longevity. Nor love, for that matter. Mignon hadconvinced him of that. He grimaced, and in the teeth of the wind hechuckled. Fate was a playful old chap. It was a good joke he had playedon him--first a bit of pneumonia, then a set of bad lungs afflictedwith that "galloping" something-or-other that hollows one's cheeks andtakes the blood out of one's veins. It was then that the horror hadgrown larger and larger each day in Mignon's big baby-blue eyes, untilshe came out with childish frankness and said that it was terriblyembarrassing to have one's friends know that one was engaged to aconsumptive.
Philip laughed as he thought of that. The laugh came so suddenly and soexplosively that Bram could have heard it a hundred yards away, evenwith the wind blowing as it was. A consumptive! Philip doubled up hisarm until the hard muscles in it snapped. He drew in a deep lungful ofair, and forced it out again with a sound like steam escaping from avalve. The NORTH had done that for him; the north with its wonderfulforests, its vast skies, its rivers, and its lakes, and its deepsnows--the north that makes a man out of the husk of a man if givenhalf a chance. He loved it. And because he loved it, and the adventureof it, he had joined the Police two years ago. Some day he would goback, just for the fun of it; meet his old friends in his old clubs,and shock baby-eyed Mignon to death with his good health.
He dropped these meditations as he thought of the mysterious man he wasfollowing. During the course of his two years in the Service he hadpicked up a great many odds and ends in the history of Bram's life, andin the lives of the Johnsons who had preceded him. He had never toldany one how deeply interested he was. He had, at times, made efforts todiscuss the quality of Bram's intelligence, but always he had failed tomake others see and understand his point of view. By the Indians andhalf-breeds of the country in which he had lived, Bram was regarded asa monster of the first order possessed of the conjuring powers of thedevil himself. By the police he was earnestly desired as the mostdangerous murderer at large in all the north, and the lucky man whocaptured him, dead or alive, was sure of a sergeantcy. Ambition andhope had run high in many valiant hearts until it was generallyconceded that Bram was dead.
Philip was not thinking of the sergeantcy as he kept steadily along theedge of the Barren. His service would shortly be up, and he had otherplans for the future. From the moment his fingers had touched thegolden strand of hair he had been filled with a new and curiousemotion. It possessed him even more strongly to-day than it had lastnight. He had not given voice to that emotion, or to the thoughts ithad roused, even to Pierre. Perhaps he was ridiculous. But he possessedimagination, and along with that a great deal of sympathy foranimals--and some human beings. He had, for the time, ceased to be thecool and calculating man-hunter intent on the possession of another'slife. He knew that his duty was to get Bram and take him back toheadquarters, and he also knew that he would perform his duty when theopportunity came--unless he had guessed correctly the significance ofthe golden snare.
And had he guessed correctly? There was a tremendous doubt in his mind,and yet he was strangely thrilled. He tried to argue that there weremany ways in which Bram might have secured the golden hairs that hadgone into the making of his snare; and that the snare itself might longhave been carried as a charm against the evils of disease and the devilby the strange creature whose mind and life were undoubtedly directedto a large extent by superstition. In that event it was quite logicalthat Bram had come into possession of his golden talisman years ago.
In spite of himself, Philip could not believe that this was so. Atnoon, when he built a small fire to make tea and warm his bannock, hetook the golden tress from his wallet and examined it even more closelythan last night. It might have come from a woman's head only yesterday,so bright and shimmery was it in the pale light of the midday sun. Hewas amazed at the length and fineness of it, and the splendid textureof each hair. Possibly there were half a hundred hairs, each of anequal and unbroken length.
He ate his dinner, and went on. Three days of storm had covered utterlyevery trace of the trail made by Bram and his wolves. He was convinced,however, that Bram would travel in the scrub timber close to theBarren. He had already made up his mind that this Barren--the GreatBarren of the unmapped north--was the great snow sea in which Bram hadso long found safety from the law. Beaching five hundred miles east andwest, and almost from the Sixtieth degree to the Arctic Ocean, itsun-peopled and treeless wastes formed a tramping ground for him as safeas the broad Pacific to the pirates of old. He could not repress ashivering exclamation as his mind dwelt on this world of Bram's. It wasworse than the edge of the Arctic, where one might at least have theEskimo for company.
He realized the difficulty of his own quest. His one chance lay in fairweather, and the discovery of an old trail made by Bram and his pack.An old trail would lead to fresher ones. Also he was determined tostick to the edge of the scrub timber, for if the Barren was Bram'sretreat he would sooner or later strike a trail--unless Bram had gonestraight out into the vast white plain shortly after he had made hiscamp in the forest near Pierre Breault's cabin.
In that event it mightbe weeks before Bram would return to the scrub timber again.
That night the last of the blizzard that had raged for days exhausteditself. For a week clear weather followed. It was intensely cold, butno snow fell. In that week Philip traveled a hundred and twenty mileswestward.
It was on the eighth night, as he sat near his fire in a thick clump ofdwarf spruce, that the thing happened which Pierre Breault, with afatalism born of superstition, knew would come to pass. And it iscurious that on this night, and in the very hour of the strangehappening, Philip had with infinite care and a great deal of troublerewoven the fifty hairs back into the form of the golden snare.