Chapter XXV: The Travelers Without Snowshoes

After the wolverine was killed trapping had improved for a time. Then the catches began to dwindle, growing smaller and smaller. Louis and Neil agreed that they must either change their hunting grounds or go back to Pembina. They had promised to return early in March. Now March had come, with a thaw that suggested an early spring. The ducks and geese would soon be flying north, spring fishing would begin, and food be plentiful again in the settlement. And perhaps both boys were a bit homesick.

“We go back with less food than we came away with,” said Louis, “but we have not been forced to eat wolf yet. Not once have we been near starving, and we have a good catch of pelts. We will make the rounds of our traps once more, spend the night in the hut near _Tête de Boeuf_, and start from there.”

The morning was fine and the sun already high, when the boys left the overnight shelter in the rolling hills below Buffalo Head. Neil went ahead to break trail. The two dogs, fresh and eager, pulled willingly. The sled was well loaded with a good store of skins: rabbit, squirrel, raccoon, red fox, and mink, a few otter and beaver, two wildcats, three wolves, a couple of marten, the elk hide, and a fine and valuable silver fox pelt.

The weather was springlike, too springlike for good traveling. The soft, sticky snow clung in sodden masses to the snowshoes, making them heavy and unwieldy. It formed wet balls on the dogs’ feet. Moccasins, warm and comfortable in colder weather, became soaked. The sun glare, reflected from the white expanse, was almost unbearable. Before noon, Walter’s eyes, squinted and screwed nearly shut to keep out the excess of light, were smarting painfully. Neil’s were even worse. He was so snow blind that he dropped behind, following his comrades by hearing instead of by sight. Louis, less troubled by the glare, had to do all the trail breaking.

They had hoped to reach the Red River by night, but the usual four miles an hour were impossible in the sodden, soft snow. Having made a later start than they intended, they permitted themselves no stop at noon. At sundown they made a perilous crossing of a prairie stream on water-covered, spongy ice, that threatened at every step to go down under them, and reached a clump of willows.

“We stop here and have a cup of tea and dry our moccasins,” Louis announced.

The others, tired, hungry, with chilled feet, aching legs, and smarting, swollen eyes, were only too glad of a halt. A fire was soon burning and the kettle steaming over it. The boys, seated on bales of furs, took off their moccasins and held their feet to the blaze. The tired dogs lay in the snow near by, tongues hanging out and eager eyes watching the supper preparations.

The meal was a scanty one. For the boys there was tea and a very small chunk of pemmican, saved for the return trip. One little fish each remained for the dogs. Yet everyone felt better for the food, so much better that Louis proposed going on.

“It will be easier by night,” he asserted. “The snow will freeze over the top.”

“I’m for keeping on,” Neil agreed, “if I can see to find the way.” His reddened eyelids were swollen almost shut. “How about you, Walter?”

When Walter had sunk down on the furs before the fire, he had not dreamed of traveling farther that day. If the question had been put to him then he would have answered no. But now that his feet were warm and he was fortified with food and hot tea, going on did not seem so impossible. He felt strangely anxious to reach Pembina. His thoughts, ever since morning, had been turning to the Periers. It was more than two months since he had heard from them. How had things been going with them? Surely there were letters awaiting him at the settlement. “Let’s go on by all means,” he replied to Neil’s question, “as far as we can. It won’t be so bad when the snow hardens and there isn’t any sun glare.”

Louis nodded. “We will rest till darkness comes. The wind has changed. It will soon be much colder, I think.”

There was no doubt that the weather was turning colder. Thawing had ceased with the setting of the sun, and the wind came from the northwest. By the time the journey was resumed, a crust had formed on the snow. The going was much easier, but the dogs were tired and footsore. Gray Wolf showed strong disinclination to pull. Askimé, however, did his best, and dragged his reluctant comrade along. The average half-breed driver would have lashed and beaten the weary beasts, but Louis used the whip sparingly. He pulled with them or encouraged them by running ahead.

In spite of weariness the travelers made good progress. After midnight they paused in a willow clump for another cup of hot tea, and then went on again. The night had turned bitterly cold, and there was no sheltered spot nearer than the banks of the Red River. The river was now only a few miles away, so they forced themselves and the reluctant dogs forward. There was no lack of light, for the moon was at the full in a clear sky. The surface of the snow was frozen so hard that no obscuring drift was carried before the wind. The waves of the prairie were motionless. The three boys and two dogs might have been at the north pole so alone were they. Except for their own voices and the slight noises of sled and snowshoes, as they sped forward over the crust, there was not a sound of living creature in a world of star-strewn sky and endless snow.

A brisk pace was necessary for warmth, and, in spite of their weariness, they kept it up. Reaching the woods bordering the river, they made their way among scattering, bare-limbed trees, creaking and clashing in the wind. In search of a sheltered camping ground, they descended a stretch of open slope to an almost level terrace about a third of the way down to the stream. And there they came upon the trail of human beings.

Stooping to examine the tracks, Louis gave a low whistle of amazement. “_Ma foi_, but this is strange! Those men had no snowshoes. Why should anyone travel without them at this time of year?”

“Do you see any sled marks?” queried Neil. His own eyes were hardly in condition to distinguish faint traces by moonlight.

“I find none. Even on the crust a _tabagane_ would leave some marks. Those men without snowshoes broke through the crust.”

“Perhaps it is nothing but an animal trail,” Walter suggested.

“No, no. Men without snowshoes came this way.” Louis followed the tracks a little distance, then returned to his companions and the dogs, who had stopped for a rest. “There were three people,” he said positively, “two men; or a man and a boy,—and a woman.”

“How can you tell it was a woman?” demanded Neil sceptically.

“Where she broke through into soft snow there are the marks of her skirt.”

“Maybe it was a man wrapped in a blanket. They were probably Indians,” the Scotch boy suggested.

Louis shook his head. “Why should Indians travel without snowshoes?”

“Well, it’s no affair of ours how they traveled or why. What we want is a camping place. The wind strikes us here.”

“Yes,” Louis agreed, “we will go on and look for a better place.”

Along the terrace the dogs needed no guidance. Nose lowered, Askimé followed the human tracks. Where the terrace dipped down a little, the husky paused, raised his head, and howled. Louis ran forward and almost stumbled over something lying in the snow in the shadow of the slope. He uttered a sharp exclamation.

“What’s the matter?” called Neil.

“Have you found a good place?” asked Walter.

“I have found a man,” came the surprising reply.

“A man? Frozen?”

Neil hurried to join Louis, who was on his knees trying to unroll the blanket that wrapped the motionless form lying in the snow. Neil stooped to help.

“His heart beats. He still breathes,” Louis exclaimed. “But he is cold, cold as ice. Make a fire, you and Walter. I will rub him and try to keep the life in.”

Neil snatched the ax from the sled. Walter kicked off his snowshoes and set to work digging and scraping away the snow. As soon as he had kindled some fine shavings and added larger wood to make a good blaze, he helped Louis to carry the unconscious man nearer the fire. As they laid him down where the firelight shone on his face, Walter gave a cry of surprise and horror.

“Monsieur Perier! It is Monsieur Perier, Louis!”

He recalled Louis’ certainty that the tracks were those of a man, a boy, and a woman. “Where are the others?” he cried. “Where are Elise and Max?”

Without waiting for an answer, he sprang up and began to search. In a hollow in the snow in the lee of a leafless bush, completely hidden in deep shadow, he found another huddled heap wrapped in blankets; Elise and Max clasped in each other’s arms. Between them and the place where their father had lain were the ashes of a dead fire.