Animal Heroes — The Winnipeg Wolf, part 2
IV
Early that winter Jimmie was taken down with a fever.
The Wolf howled miserably in the yard when he missed his little friend, and finally on the boy's demand was admitted to the sick-room, and there this great wild Dog--for that is all a Wolf is--continued faithfully watching by his friend's bedside.
The fever had seemed slight at first, so that every one was shocked when there came suddenly a turn for the worse, and three days before Christmas Jimmie died.
He had no more sincere mourner than his "Wolfie."
The great gray creature howled in miserable answer to the church-bell tolling when he followed the body on Christmas Eve to the graveyard at St. Boniface.
He soon came back to the premises behind the saloon, but when an attempt was made to chain him again, he leaped a board fence and was finally lost sight of.
Later that same winter old Renaud, the trapper, with his pretty half-breed daughter, Ninette, came to live in a little log-cabin on the river bank.
He knew nothing about Jimmie Hogan, and he was not a little puzzled to find Wolf tracks and signs along the river on both sides between St. Boniface and Fort Garry.
He listened with interest and doubt to tales that the Hudson Bay Company's men told of a great Gray-wolf that had come to live in the region about, and even to enter the town at night, and that was in particular attached to the woods about St. Boniface Church.
On Christmas Eve of that year when the bell tolled again as it had done for Jimmie, a lone and melancholy howling from the woods almost convinced Renaud that the stories were true.
He knew the wolf-cries--the howl for help, the love song, the lonely wail, and the sharp defiance of the Wolves.
This was the lonely wail.
The trapper went to the riverside and gave an answering howl.
A shadowy form left the far woods and crossed on the ice to where the man sat, log-still, on a log.
It came up near him, circled past and sniffed, then its eye glowed; it growled like a Dog that is a little angry, and glided back into the night.
Thus Renaud knew, and before long many townfolk began to learn, that a huge Gray-wolf was living in their streets, "a Wolf three times as big as the one that used to be chained at Hogan's gin-mill."
He was the terror of Dogs, killing them on all possible occasions, and some said, though it was never proven, that he had devoured more than one half-breed who was out on a spree.
And this was the Winnipeg Wolf that I had seen that day in the wintry woods.
I had longed to go to his help, thinking the odds so hopelessly against him, but later knowledge changed the thought.
I do not know how that fight ended, but I do know that he was seen many times afterward and some of the Dogs were not.
Thus his was the strangest life that ever his kind had known.
Free of all the woods and plains, he elected rather to lead a life of daily hazard in the town--each week at least some close escape, and every day a day of daring deeds; finding momentary shelter at times under the very boardwalk crossings.
Hating the men and despising the Dogs, he fought his daily way and held the hordes of Curs at bay or slew them when he found them few or single; harried the drunkard, evaded men with guns, learned traps--learned poison, too--just how, we cannot tell, but learn it he did, for he passed it again and again, or served it only with a Wolf's contempt.
Not a street in Winnipeg that he did not know; not a policeman in Winnipeg that had not seen his swift and shadowy form in the gray dawn as he passed where he would; not a Dog in Winnipeg that did not cower and bristle when the telltale wind brought proof that old Garou was crouching near.
His only path was the warpath, and all the world his foes.
But throughout this lurid, semi-mythic record there was one recurring pleasant thought--Garou never was known to harm a child.
V
Ninette was a desert-born beauty like her Indian mother, but gray-eyed like her Normandy father, a sweet girl of sixteen, the belle of her set.
She might have married any one of the richest and steadiest young men of the country, but of course, in feminine perversity her heart was set on that ne'er-do-well, Paul des Roches.
A handsome fellow, a good dancer and a fair violinist, Fiddler Paul was in demand at all festivities, but he was a shiftless drunkard and it was even whispered that he had a wife already in Lower Canada.
Renaud very properly dismissed him when he came to urge his suit, but dismissed him in vain.
Ninette, obedient in all else, would not give up her lover.
The very day after her father had ordered him away she promised to meet him in the woods just across the river.
It was easy to arrange this, for she was a good Catholic, and across the ice to the church was shorter than going around by the bridge.
As she went through the snowy wood to the tryst she noticed that a large gray Dog was following.
It seemed quite friendly, and the child (for she was still that) had no fear, but when she came to the place where Paul was waiting, the gray Dog went forward rumbling in its chest.
Paul gave one look, knew it for a huge Wolf, then fled like the coward he was.
He afterward said he ran for his gun.
He must have forgotten where it was, as he climbed the nearest tree to find it.
Meanwhile Ninette ran home across the ice to tell Paul's friends of his danger.
Not finding any firearms up the tree, the valiant lover made a spear by fastening his knife to a branch and succeeded in giving Garou a painful wound on the head.
The savage, creature growled horribly but thenceforth kept at a safe distance, though plainly showing his intention to wait till the man came down.
But the approach of a band of rescuers changed his mind, and he went away.
Fiddler Paul found it easier to explain matters to Ninette than he would to any one else.
He still stood first in her affections, but so hopelessly ill with her father that they decided on an elopement, as soon as he should return from Fort Alexander, whither he was to go for the Company, as dog-driver.
The Factor was very proud of his train Dogs--three great Huskies with curly, bushy tails, big and strong as Calves, but fierce and lawless as pirates.
With these the Fiddler Paul was to drive to Fort Alexander from Fort Garry--the bearer of several important packets.
He was an expert Dog-driver, which usually means relentlessly cruel.
He set off blithely down the river in the morning, after the several necessary drinks of whiskey.
He expected to be gone a week, and would then come back with twenty dollars in his pocket, and having thus provided the sinews of war, would carry out the plan of elopement.
Away they went down the river on the ice.
The big Dogs pulled swiftly but sulkily as he cracked the long whip and shouted, "Allez, allez, marchez."
They passed at speed by Renaud's shanty on the bank, and Paul, cracking his whip and running behind the train, waved his hand to Ninette as she stood by the door.
Speedily the cariole with the sulky Dogs and drunken driver disappeared around the bend--and that was the last ever seen of Fiddler Paul.
That evening the Huskies came back singly to Fort Garry.
They were spattered with frozen blood, and were gashed in several places.
But strange to tell they were quite "unhungry."
Runners went on the back trail and recovered the packages.
They were lying on the ice unharmed.
Fragments of the sled were strewn for a mile or more up the river; not far from the packages were shreds of clothing that had belonged to the Fiddler.
It was quite clear, the Dogs had murdered and eaten their driver.
The Factor was terribly wrought up over the matter.
It might cost him his Dogs.
He refused to believe the report and set off to sift the evidence for himself.
Renaud was chosen to go with him, and before they were within three miles of the fatal place Renaud pointed to a very large track crossing from the east to the west bank of the river, just after the Dog sled.
He ran it backward for a mile or more on the eastern bank, noted how it had walked when the Dogs walked and run when they ran, before he turned to the Factor and said: "A beeg Voolf--he come after ze cariole all ze time."
Now they followed the track where it had crossed to the west shore.
Two miles above Kildonan woods the Wolf had stopped his gallop to walk over to the sled trail, had followed it a few yards, then had returned to the woods.
"Paul he drop somesin' here, ze packet maybe; ze Voolf he come for smell.
He follow so--now he know zat eez ze drunken Paul vot slash heem on ze head."
A mile farther the Wolf track came galloping on the ice behind the cariole.
The man track disappeared now, for the driver had leaped on the sled and lashed the Dogs.
Here is where he cut adrift the bundles.
That is why things were scattered over the ice.
See how the Dogs were bounding under the lash.
Here was the Fiddler's knife in the snow.
He must have dropped it in trying to use it on the Wolf.
And here-what!
the Wolf track disappears, but the sled track speeds along.
The Wolf has leaped on the sled.
The Dogs, in terror, added to their speed; but on the sleigh behind them there is a deed of vengeance done.
In a moment it is over; both roll off the sled; the Wolf track reappears on the east side to seek the woods.
The sled swerves to the west bank, where, after half a mile, it is caught and wrecked on a root.
The snow also told Renaud how the Dogs, entangled in the harness, had fought with each other, had cut themselves loose, and trotting homeward by various ways up the river, had gathered at the body of their late tyrant and devoured him at a meal.
Bad enough for the Dogs, still they were cleared of the murder.
That certainly was done by the Wolf, and Renaud, after the shock of horror was past, gave a sigh of relief and added, "Eet is le Garou.
He hab save my leel girl from zat Paul.
He always was good to children."
VI
This was the cause of the great final hunt that they fixed for Christmas Day just two years after the scene at the grave of Little Jim.
It seemed as though all the Dogs in the country were brought together.
The three Huskies were there--the Factor considered them essential--there were Danes and trailers and a rabble of farm Dogs and nondescripts.
They spent the morning beating all the woods east of St. Boniface and had no success.
But a telephone message came that the trail they sought had been seen near the Assiniboine woods west of the city, and an hour later the hunt was yelling on the hot scent of the Winnipeg Wolf.
Away they went, a rabble of Dogs, a motley rout of horsemen, a mob of men and boys on foot.
Garou had no fear of the Dogs, but men he knew had guns and were dangerous.
He led off for the dark timber line of the Assiniboine, but the horsemen had open country and they headed him back.
He coursed along the Colony Creek hollow and so eluded the bullets already flying.
He made for a barb-wire fence, and passing that he got rid of the horsemen for a time, but still must keep the hollow that baffled the bullets.
The Dogs were now closing on him.
All he might have asked would probably have been to be left alone with them--forty or fifty to one as they were--he would have taken the odds.
The Dogs were all around him now, but none dared to close in, A lanky Hound, trusting to his speed, ran alongside at length and got a side chop from Garou that laid him low.
The horsemen were forced to take a distant way around, but now the chase was toward the town, and more men and Dogs came running out to join the fray.
The Wolf turned toward the slaughter-house, a familiar resort, and the shooting ceased on account of the houses, as well as the Dogs, being so near.
These were indeed now close enough to encircle him and hinder all further flight.
He looked for a place to guard his rear for a final stand, and seeing a wooden foot-bridge over a gutter he sprang in, there faced about and held the pack at bay.
The men got bars and demolished the bridge.
He leaped out, knowing now that he had to die, but ready, wishing only to make a worthy fight, and then for the first time in broad day view of all his foes he stood--the shadowy Dog-killer, the disembodied voice of St. Boniface woods, the wonderful Winnipeg Wolf.
VII
At last after three long years of fight he stood before them alone, confronting twoscore Dogs, and men with guns to back them--but facing them just as resolutely as I saw him that day in the wintry woods.
The same old curl was on his lips--the hard-knit flanks heaved just a little, but his green and yellow eye glowed steadily.
The Dogs closed in, led not by the huge Huskies from the woods--they evidently knew too much for that--but by a Bulldog from the town; there was scuffling of many feet; a low rumbling for a time replaced the yapping of the pack;
a flashing of those red and grizzled jaws, a momentary hurl back of the onset, and again he stood alone and braced, the grim and grand old bandit that he was.
Three times they tried and suffered.
Their boldest were lying about him.
The first to go down was the Bulldog.
Learning wisdom now, the Dogs held back, less sure; but his square-built chest showed never a sign of weakness yet, and after waiting impatiently he advanced a few steps, and thus, alas!
gave to the gunners their long-expected chance.
Three rifles rang, and in the snow Garou went down at last, his life of combat done.
He had made his choice.
His days were short and crammed with quick events.
His tale of many peaceful years was spent in three of daily brunt.
He picked his trail, a new trail, high and short.
He chose to drink his cup at a single gulp, and break the glass-but he left a deathless name.
Who can look into the mind of the Wolf?
Who can show us his wellspring of motive?
Why should he still cling to a place of endless tribulation?
It could not be because he knew no other country, for the region is limitless, food is everywhere, and he was known at least as far as Selkirk.
Nor could his motive be revenge.
No animal will give up its whole life to seeking revenge; that evil kind of mind is found in man alone.
The brute creation seeks for peace.
There is then but one remaining bond to chain him, and that the strongest claim that anything can own--the mightiest force on earth.
The Wolf is gone.
The last relic of him was lost in the burning Grammar School, but to this day the sexton of St. Boniface Church avers that the tolling bell on Christmas Eve never fails to provoke that weird and melancholy Wolf-cry from the wooded graveyard a hundred steps away, where they laid his Little Jim, the only being on earth that ever met him with the touch of love.
THE LEGEND OF THE WHITE REINDEER
