RENCH LOUEY grew restless with the approach of frosty nights. He jingled his rawhide bag of gold from wolf bounties and hides, listening absently to the tune it rang. His throat half formed the moose call as he pawed the ground with his moccasins, a longing for the wild in his blood.
"By Gar!" he grunted. "Time for me to ru-un for de green timber!"
Keen frost lays the gloss on guard hair of mink and otter; it starts the fur of marten, fox pekan, and all the land animals to coming prime. The hardwoods let their gay colored leaves flutter to earth, while the spruce and balsam glaze with bright reflections from the evergreen of their needle leaves.
"Time for me to smoke meat, jerk venison!" the old trapper grinned, the scattering bristles on his leathery cheeks standing out like silver wires. "Firstest I know, zat sou 'west wind lay me by gull rocks maybe till I freeze up! No chance it— Come, now, you lazy scoundrel! Come— hi-i! Hi-i!"
French Louey complained in bitter words, but with twinkling eyes, of the fate that dragged him each autumn from Talking Birches, a buxom breed at St. Ignac, and from another friend, Mrs. Wustane, both of whom he had courted in vain, but amusingly from age to age.
Then he dropped in on Captain Argyle, of the fish tug Little St. Ignac; ran in to see the Dampier boys, lying at Black River mouth. He danced ashore on limber, springy legs, and he was pitched about and tossed in his wonderful old sailboat, between squalls as he scurried in and out, down the coast of the North Superior shore, paying his respects.
"By Gar!" he grumbled. "I don' lak de looks, not a beet, of dat blue cloud down by the sou'west! Ba-a—hi-i!"
On some days, with a sweep and a swish, the blue-cloud would make a grab, but he would duck around a point, or under the lee of something or other, cackling at the squall that he just felt in the hair on the back of his neck. The blow gone by, he would go slipping out laughing and jeering the vanity of squalls, and from the horizon the dark swells of the "windy mists" would reach up and draw back—for he knew them; knew their nature; read their will to engulf him, as he knew the North Shore, East End, and the Green Timber.
Thus he arrived at Blue Jay Harbor. He sailed in with his red canvas spread to the western zephyrs and a slant of a golden, setting sun casting his long pointed shadow in purple ahead of him. He sang the mad joy of his heart, holding his tiller with one hand, shaking his jingle-gold at the stone along the water's edge and toward the tall, slim spruces, firs, and graceful silver birches.
"I come-e!" he cried. "French Louey come-e! Hi-i! Sons o' groons! Wolfs look out—an' dis tam, ol' boy, I bet I jerk yo' into sevum hunder pound of venison! I bet-t! Dis tam I do eet!"
Wolves he detested, hated, and delighted in. Toward moose he had a different feeling, which he regarded with amusement and exultation. The moment he heard the keel scrape on the gritting sand of the landing, he pranced ashore with a kind of spidery jump, making fast with a line, but stopping in a blank amazement as six or eight gorgeous bluejays, puffed out in their winter plumage, swarmed into overhanging branches, and began to scold.
They screamed, jeered, chirruped, whistled, and spread the alarm of his arrival until the chickerees back in the evergreens began to call, and two or three ruffed grouse took up the alarm, nervously, and flew away with the subdued roar of their kind.
"Dar yo' go!" French Louey cried in anguish. "Tam plue jays, scare all de game, all de meat anywhere, an' now where I shoot my jerk, eh? What I live on dis wintaire if I don't jerk de moose?"
He turned a gaze of malignant joy and delighted indignation at the flock of birds. He walked along the sand, peering and stretching his neck. Sure enough, a few rods distant he came upon a track on the loose grit. Some great brute had trampled there, taking long steps, and plowing heavily amid the scattering fall of autumnal leaves.
"Dat's heem. all right!" French Louey shook his head. "The son of a goon! He mak' sevum hunder pound of jerk! I keel heem, an' look, I get fat on my ribs like a—oh, like a bull moose, mebby! Mebby, too I grow me a pair of yellow horns so beeg, by Gar, I have a stiff neck! Here he is yet! An' you blue scoundrels! W'at de t'un'er yo' tell heem I come for? Hi-! By Gar! I feex yo' sons o' goons!