Early in the New Year, Louis, Neil and Walter set out for the Pembina Mountains or the Hare Hills, as that ridge of rough land was sometimes called. New Year’s day, ushered in with the firing of muskets, was another occasion for merrymaking and hilarity in the settlement. Indeed the feasting, dancing, and gaiety had scarcely ceased day or night since Christmas. Many a bois brulé family had shared their winter supplies so generously with their guests that they had almost nothing left and would have to resort to hunting and fishing through the ice. Though they might starve before spring, the light-hearted, improvident half-breeds did not grudge what had been consumed in the festivities. They would do the same thing over again at the first opportunity.

The rapid decrease of supplies in the village gave Louis and Neil excuse for a hunting trip, and Walter was ready and eager to go along. At the Pembina Mountains they would be sure to find both game and fur animals, Louis asserted. He had been there the winter before and had found good hunting. On that trip he and his companion had come across an old and empty but snug log cabin that had been built by some hunting or trading party. He proposed to return to the old camp and stay several weeks.

Walter was the more ready to go because, on the last day of the old year, he had received word from the Periers that they were getting along all right. The letter, from Elise, was brought by a half-breed who had come from St. Boniface to be married on New Year’s day to a Pembina girl. Her father’s cough was much better, Elise wrote. He was working at the buffalo wool factory with Matthieu. Max had been disappointed to find that Mr. West’s school was a good two miles from Sergeant Kolbach’s home, too far for the little fellow to go and come in cold weather. “But we are both of us learning some English without going to school,” Elise added.

The cabin was warm, and they had enough to eat, principally pemmican, and fish caught in nets set under the ice in the rivers. “You know I did not like pemmican,” wrote Elise, “but now I am used to it. For Christmas we had a feast, a piece of fresh venison, and a pudding made with some wheat flour M. Kolbach had saved and with a sauce of melted sugar, the sugar the Indians make from the sap of the maple tree. Have you eaten any of that sugar, Walter? It is the best thing I have tasted since we came to this new land. You wrote to me that I must tell you if everything here did not go well. Of course it is not like home in Switzerland. We are not as comfortable or as happy as we were there, and sometimes Max and I are very lonely and homesick. Father does not complain of the hardships and is always planning what we are going to do when spring comes. We keep warm, we are well, and we have enough to eat, though we long for bread with butter, and milk, and cheese. I get the meals and wash and mend our clothes and keep the house clean. M. Kolbach says it is more comfortable than before we came. I can’t really like M. Kolbach, though I know I ought to, it is so good of him to have us here. He is rather harsh to Max sometimes, but not to me, and yet I feel a little afraid of him. Isn’t it strange that we can’t like people by just trying to, no matter how hard we try? But I am very grateful to M. Kolbach for taking care of us.”

This part of the letter troubled Walter a little, but, reading it over a second time, he concluded that Elise was merely homesick. Kolbach was very likely a rough sort of man, but he must have a kind heart or he would not do so much for strangers. There was no mention of the younger brother. Probably Elise knew nothing of him. Father Dumoulin thought Fritz Kolbach might not be on very good terms with the Sergeant. Perhaps after the robbery of the Indian, Fritz had not returned to St. Boniface. Undoubtedly the trader at Pembina had sent an account of that affair to Fort Douglas. Kolbach and Murray might not dare to show their faces there.

The day of their start for the Pembina Mountains, Louis and Walter were up before dawn. The morning was still and very cold. After packing their few supplies and belongings on the toboggan, the boys passed a long rawhide rope, or shaganappy, back and forth over the load and through the loops of the leather lashing that ran along the edges of the sled. Before the work was done their fingers were aching. They were glad to go back into the cabin for a breakfast of hot pemmican and tea.

As he went out again, Walter paused on the threshold to stare in amazement. The sun was not yet above the horizon, but the whole world had changed. He seemed to be standing in the center of a vast bowl. On every hand the country appeared to curve upward. And the distance was no longer distant! Groves of bare branched trees, streams, heights of land that he knew to be miles away had moved in around the settlement until they seemed only a few rods distant. To the west the line of hills, – Pembina Mountains, – that he had never glimpsed, even on the clearest day, as more than a faint blue line on the horizon, loomed up a mighty, flat-topped ridge. Once before, in December, Walter had seen the landscape transformed, but it was nothing to compare with this. Louis, familiar from childhood with the mirage of the prairie, declared he had never known such an extraordinary one.

Awed and wondering, the two lads stood gazing about them. Turning to the east, they watched a spreading ray of crimson light mount the sky from the soft, low lying, rose and gold bordered clouds at the horizon. The sun was coming up. As the horizon clouds reddened and the rim of the glowing disk appeared, an exclamation from his companion caused Walter to wheel about.

Louis was pointing at two men and a dog team gliding through the air, – upside down! Every detail was startlingly clear, capotes with hoods pulled up, sashes, buckskin leggings, snowshoes. The driver with the long whip looked very tall. He belabored his dogs cruelly. It seemed to Walter that he ought to hear the man’s shouts and curses, the howls and whines of the abused beasts. He could see their tracks in the snow, and a fringe of trees beyond them, – everything inverted as if he himself were standing on his head to watch men and dogs moving across the prairie. As he watched, the figures grew to gigantic stature, the outlines became indistinct. They vanished altogether. The sun was above the clouds now. The distance grew hazy. Only part of the chain of hills was visible. Louis turned to Walter, excitement in his voice.

“I think those men go to the mountain too,” he said. “Do you know how far away they are?”

Walter shook his head. He felt quite incapable of estimating distance in this fantastic world, where things he knew to be miles away were almost hitting him in the face.

“At least fifteen miles,” declared Louis impressively.

“Impossible. We couldn’t see them so plainly.”

“And yet we have seen them. The mirage is always unbelievable.”

“What is it anyway, Louis? What causes it?”

The Canadian lad shrugged his shoulders. “The Indians say the spirits of the air play tricks to bewilder men and make them wander off the trail to seek things that are not there. Once I asked Father Dumoulin and he said the spirits had nothing to do with it. He called it a false effect of light, but that does not explain it, do you think?”

Again Walter shook his head.

“This I have noticed,” Louis went on. “I have never seen the mirage in winter except at dawn or sunset. In summer I have seen it in the middle of the day when it was very hot and still. But why it comes, winter or summer, I do not know.”

Neil’s arrival stirred the others to action. The dogs were harnessed and good-byes said to Louis’ mother and sisters and rather sulky younger brother. Raoul wanted to go too, but one of the boys was needed at home.

Fresh and full of spirits, the dogs set off at such a pace that the boys had all they could do to keep up. When they left the trail and took to the untracked snow, speed slackened considerably. Louis now went ahead of the team, though track breaking was hardly necessary. Underneath an inch or more of dry, loose stuff, almost like sand, the snow was well packed and held up the dogs and sled. The line of hills had vanished, but the mirage did not entirely disappear and the landscape resume its natural appearance until the sun had been up nearly two hours.

The day was cold, much colder than the lads realized at first, for, when the start was made and for some time thereafter, there was not a breath of wind. All three wore fur caps and mittens, woolen capotes, and thick knit stockings under their moccasins. Walter had possessed none of these things when he came to Pembina, but Mrs. Brabant had made him a capote from a Hudson Bay blanket and a cap and mittens from a rather well worn bearskin. She had knit warm, new stockings for both boys from yarn bought at the trading post. A prickling feeling in his nose was Walter’s first warning that his flesh was freezing. Stooping for a handful of snow, he rubbed the prickly spot to restore circulation, and pulled the hood of his capote farther around his face.

Their course at first lay to the north of the Pembina River, over flat prairie without an elevation high enough to be called a hill. On that January morning, the whole plain was a stretch of dazzling white. In the distance it appeared level, but it was actually made up of rolling snow waves. It was, Walter thought, like a great lake or sea, the waves of which had suddenly frozen while in motion and turned to snow instead of ice.

XIX
BLIZZARD

As the sun rose higher the wind began to blow. The loose surface snow was set in motion, crawling and creeping up the frozen waves. The wind gained in strength, and everywhere the plain seemed to be moving. The glitter was less trying to the eyes now, for the sun had grown hazy. Louis glanced up at the sky, shouted to his dogs, sent his long whip flying through the air and flicked the leader with the lash.

“A storm comes,” he called to his companions. “We must make haste and reach the river where it bends to the north.”

With the increase of speed, Walter, less experienced in this sort of travel than his comrades, found keeping up difficult. Neither with nor without snowshoes was he the equal of the swift, tireless Louis. Neil too was his superior on snowshoes, though on bare ground Walter could outrun the Scotch boy. In spite of all his efforts he fell behind. Seeing his difficulty, Louis suggested that he ride for a while, standing on the rear of the sled. Glad though he was of a few minutes’ rest, Walter did not ride long. The northwest wind soon chilled him through, and he was forced to run to warm himself.

The dogs’ pace was slackening. The course was due west, and the wind, striking them at an angle, slowed their progress. The surface snow, caught up by the gale, drove against and swirled about beasts and boys.

Walter plodded after the others, head lowered, capote hood pulled down over his cap to his eyes. Suddenly he realized that the fine, driving, blinding stuff that struck against him with such force and stung wherever it touched his bare skin, was not merely the fallen snow whipped forward by the wind. Snow was falling, – or being lashed down upon him, – from above. The sunshine was gone. The distance, the sky were wholly blotted out. He and his comrades were in the grip of a hard northwest storm, a genuine prairie blizzard.

Louis was having his hands full trying to keep a straight course. All landmarks blotted out, the wind was the only guide, and the dogs were continually edging away from the bitter blast. The French boy, of a naturally kind disposition and brought up by a good mother and a father who had no Indian blood, was far more humane than most dog drivers. He never abused his beasts, and he punished them only when discipline was necessary. Now, however, he was compelled to use the whip vigorously to keep them from swinging far to the south. Shouts and commands, drowned out by the roaring of the wind, were of little avail.

Dogs and boys struggled on in the driving wind, the bitter cold, and the blinding snow; and the struggle saved them from freezing. The snow was coming so thick and fast they could see only a few feet in any direction. Following behind the toboggan, Walter could not make out Askimé or the second dog. The third beast, next to the sled, was but a dim shape. Louis and Neil took turns going ahead of Askimé. While one was breaking trail, the other wielded the whip and tried to keep the dogs in the track.

Plodding on through a white, swirling world, fighting against wind and snow, his whole mind intent on keeping the shadowy, moving forms in sight, his feet feeling like clogs of wood, his ankles and calves aching with the unaccustomed exercise of snowshoeing, Walter lost all count of time. When the sled stopped, he kept on blindly and nearly fell over it.

Louis seized him by the arm and shouted, “We can go no farther. We can’t keep a straight course. We must camp here.”

Walter tried to look about him. He could see nothing but wind-driven snow, not a tree or hill or other sign of shelter. “We’ll freeze to death,” he protested huskily.

“No, no, we will be safe and warm. Kick off your snowshoes and help Neil dig.”

Walter obeyed, slipping his feet from the thongs. Following the Scotch lad’s example, he seized one of the shoes and, using it as a shovel, began to scoop up snow. Louis unharnessed the dogs and unlaced the hide cover, almost freezing his fingers in the process. Hastily dumping the supplies in a heap, he turned the sled on its side, and joined the diggers. In the lee of the toboggan, which kept the drifting snow from filling the hole as fast as they dug it out, the three boys worked for their lives. Down through the dry, loose surface, through the firm packed layer below, to the hard frozen ground, they dug. Scooping out the snow, they tried to make a wall, though the wind swept it away almost as rapidly as they piled it up.

Working steadily at their best speed, they succeeded at last in excavating a hole large enough to hold all three. The heap of supplies had been converted into a mound, the toboggan into a drift. Burrowing into the mound, the boys pulled out robes and blankets, hastily spread them at the bottom of the hole, and threw in their supplies. A long pole, that Louis had added to the load just before starting, was laid across the hole, one end resting on the toboggan. Clinging to the hide cover to keep it from blowing away, they drew it over the pole and weighted down the corners with a keg of powder, a sack of bullets, and the steel traps. After the edges of this tent roof had been banked with snow to hold it more securely, the three lads crawled under it.

When he had recovered his breath, Walter asked, “What has become of the dogs?” He had not noticed them since Louis took off their harness.

“Do you think they are lost then?” said their master with a grin. “No, they have buried themselves in the snow to keep warm. They have earned a meal though, and they shall have it.” Seizing three of the frozen fish he had brought for the dogs, Louis crawled out into the storm to find and feed them.

He was back in a few minutes, huddling among the robes and blankets. The hole was none too large. When they sat up straight, their heads nearly touched the hide cover, and all three could not lie down at one time. But in the snug burrow, with the snow-banked sled to windward, they did not feel the wind at all.

Knowing that they might have to camp where there was no fuel to be found, Louis had included a few small sticks among their supplies. Shaving one of the sticks into splinters, he struck his flint and steel and kindled a tiny fire on the bare ground in the center of the shelter. In the cover above he cut a little hole for the smoke to escape. Small though the blaze was, it sent out heat enough to thaw the boys’ stiff fingers and feet, and its light was cheering in the dark burrow. Louis melted snow, made tea, and thawed out a chunk of frozen pemmican.

By the time the meal was over, Walter found himself surprisingly warm and comfortable. He had not supposed he could be so comfortable in such a crude shelter. He was drowsy and wanted to take a nap, but one fear troubled him and made him reluctant to yield to his sleepiness.

“If the snow covers us over, won’t we smother in this hole?” he asked.

Louis shook his head. “There is no danger, I think. Often men overtaken by storm camp in the snow like this, and I never heard of anyone being smothered. There is not much snow on our tent now. It banks up against the toboggan and blows off our roof. But even if we are buried in a drift, we can still breathe I think, and we won’t freeze while we have food and a little wood to make hot tea.”

“And the dogs?”

“They will sleep warm, covered by the snow.”

Reassured, Walter settled himself as comfortably as he could manage in the cramped quarters, and went to sleep. When he woke, he found the others both sleeping, Neil curled up in his thick plaid, and Louis in a sitting position with his head down on his knees. The fire had gone out, and in spite of the blanket in which he was wrapped and the buffalo robe spread over Neil and himself, Walter felt chilled through. It was too dark in the hole for him to see the figures on his watch. Trying to rub some warmth into his cramped legs, he roused Louis.

“How long have I been asleep? Is it night?”

“I think not yet,” replied Louis, answering the second question. “It grows colder. I will make a fire and we will have some hot tea.”

To clear a space for the fire, Louis unceremoniously rolled Neil over and woke him. The Scotch lad growled and grumbled at being disturbed, but the prospect of hot tea restored his good humor. Looking at his watch in the light of the tiny blaze, Walter discovered that it was not yet five o’clock. The storm still raged over them.

“Do we get something to eat with this?” Neil asked, as Louis poured the steaming tea into his tin cup.

“Not now. We have only a little wood. We must not keep the fire burning. Warm your fingers and your feet well before it burns out.”

Louis was the leader of the expedition, and Neil did not question his decree. The three drew their blankets and robes closer about them, and made the most of the hot drink and the tiny fire. They were not sleepy now, so they talked, huddled together for warmth.

After a time conversation lagged. They grew silent, then drowsy. Walter dropped off, and woke to find Louis kindling another little blaze. It was after nine, and the three made a scanty meal of thawed pemmican before going to sleep again.

During the night Walter woke several times to rub his chilly body and limbs and snuggle closer to his companions. A buffalo robe and a blanket lay between him and the ground, his capote hood was drawn over his fur cap, he was wrapped in a blanket, and with his companions, covered with another robe, yet in his dreams he was conscious of the cold. He did not think of complaining. He had slept cold many a night since leaving Fort York. In the midst of this howling blizzard, he was thankful to be as comfortable as he was and in no immediate danger of freezing.

XX
A NIGHT ATTACK

It must have been instinct that roused Louis and set him to shaving kindlings from the last stick of wood, for there was no change in the darkness of the hole to indicate that morning had come. The smoke no longer found a way out through the hide cover. Though the wood was dry and the blaze small, Walter was half choked and his eyes were smarting by the time the tea and pemmican were ready.

“We are covered with snow,” said Louis as, in changing his position, he struck his head against the sagging roof. “But I think the storm is over.”

He was right. When the three crawled out from under the hide and burrowed their way through the drift that covered all but the wind-swept peak of their shelter, they found that the flakes had ceased to fall. The wind still blew, though not so hard, and swept the dry, fallen snow up the wave-like drifts, but the sky was clear and flushed with the red of sunrise. It was a world of sky and snow, for the swirling clouds of fine, icy particles blotted out the distance.

The boys did not stand gazing about them for long. The morning was too bitterly cold for inaction, and they wanted to be on their way. Floundering through the drifts, they found the dogs buried in the snow, and pulled them, whining piteously, out of their warm nests. Each animal bolted his frozen fish, then burrowed for another nap.

Dismantling the almost buried shelter, digging out the toboggan and loading it took some time. To fasten the cover over the load, Neil had to take off his fur mittens to handle the stiffened lacings, and frosted four fingers. He was, as he said, “ready to howl” with the pain when the blood began to circulate in them. In the meantime Louis and Walter had dug out the whining dogs. Once in the harness, they ceased their protests. At the crack of the whip and their master’s shout of “Marche, marche,” they were off willingly enough.

“I hope you know where we are and where we’re going, Louis,” said Neil as he fell into line. “I don’t.”

“I think that must be the river over there where those trees are,” Louis replied. “We cross it and go on to the west and cross it again. It makes a great bend to the north.”

The dogs were headed for the line of woods, dimly visible through the blowing snow. The trees proved to be on the bank of the Pembina, which was crossed without difficulty. The ice was thick and solid beneath its snow blanket. Beyond the river was open prairie again, a succession of snow waves, up and down, across and through which, boys and dogs made their way westward. Both Louis and Neil went ahead to break the track. Askimé, the intelligent leader of the team, seemed to sense his responsibility and kept close behind the snowshoes.

Walter brought up the rear. His ankles were lame, the muscles of his calves strained and sore from the snowshoeing of yesterday. He found the going quite hard enough, even in the trail made by two pairs of rackets, three dogs, and a loaded sled. The sky was clear blue overhead, the blowing snow particles glittered in the sunlight, but the sun seemed to give out no warmth. The north wind was piercingly cold. The strenuous exercise kept body and limbs warm, but in spite of his capote hood Walter had to rub and slap his face frequently. His hands grew numb in his fur mittens.

Only one stop was made, about mid afternoon, when they reached an île des bois, or wood island. The thick clump of leafless small trees and bushes, though broken and trampled by buffalo, furnished plenty of fuel and some protection from the wind. The boys kindled a fire, not a tiny flame but a big blaze that threw out real heat. Close around it they crouched to drink hot tea and eat a little pemmican.

Heartened by food and drink, they smothered their fire with snow that there might be no danger of its destroying the little grove, and resumed their march. Higher land came into view through the blowing drift, and Louis scanned it eagerly. He admitted that he did not know just where he was.

“We should have crossed the river again before this,” he said. “Without knowing it we have edged away from the cold wind and gone too far south. I fear we cannot find the old cabin to-night.”

“We must find fuel and shelter,” was Neil’s emphatic reply.

It was after sunset when the cold and tired travelers reached an abrupt rise of wooded ground. Skirting the base of this tree-clad cliff, they came to a steep-sided gully, where a small stream, now frozen over and snow covered, broke through. The narrow cut was lined with boulders, but trees and bushes bordered the stream and grew wherever they could find foothold on the abrupt sides among the stones. The gully was drifted with snow, but it would provide protection from the bitter wind.

Leaving his comrades with the sled, Louis explored until he found a suitable spot, where the almost perpendicular north slope cut off the wind. A huge boulder, partly embedded in the bank, would serve as the east wall of the shelter. He shouted to his companions, who joined him with sled and dogs.

“We will dig out the snow behind this big stone,” he explained, “and pile it up to make a wall on the other two sides. When we have put the toboggan and the hide cover over the top, we shall have a good warm lodge.”

The three set to work at once, Walter almost forgetting his lameness and weariness in his eagerness to complete the queer hut. When it was all done but the roof, Neil left the others to unload the sled, while he took the ax and climbed the bank to cut firewood.

Before the shelter was finished, darkness had come, and the howling of wolves echoed from the hills above. On the narrow strip of frozen, sandy ground that had been uncovered, a robe was spread. The fire was kindled against the big boulder, which reflected the heat. To the cold and tired boys, the hut seemed very snug. Wrapped in blankets, they huddled before the blaze, warm and comfortable, even though the heat did not carry far enough to make much impression on the two snow walls.

By the time Walter had eaten his portion of melted pemmican and drunk two cups of hot tea, he was so sleepy he could not keep his eyes open. Neil too was nodding, and Louis was not much wider awake. They replenished the fire, and stretched out side by side, feet to the blaze, and heads wrapped in their capote hoods.

An excited barking and howling waked Walter suddenly. How could three dogs make such an unearthly racket? With a sharp exclamation, Louis freed himself from his blanket. In a flash Walter realized that the dogs were not guilty of all that noise.

Louis was gone, Neil was following. Walter sprang up, felt for his gun, and could not find it. The fire was still smouldering. Remembering that wild animals were supposed to be afraid of fire, he seized a stick that was alight at one end. As he crawled from the shelter, he knew from the sounds that the wolves were attacking the dogs.

The loud report of a gun drowned out for an instant the snarls and growls. The dark forms of the beasts could be seen against the white snow, but the light was too dim down in the gully to show friends from foes. Louis had fired into the air.

Before the echoes of the shot had died away, Walter flung his blazing firebrand, with sure aim. It landed among the dark shapes. There was a sharp snarl, a quick backward leap of a long, thin body. Neil risked a shot. The snarling creature made a convulsive plunge forward, and fell in a heap. Black figures, three or four of them, were moving swiftly up the gully.

Louis fired again, then called commandingly, “Askimé, back!”

The brave husky had started in pursuit of the wolves. At his master’s command, he paused, hesitated, turned. Louis ran forward to seize the dog.

Askimé had been hurt, but not seriously. One of the wolves had got him by the throat, but the Eskimo’s heavy hair had protected him and the skin was only slightly torn. The other dogs were uninjured. The actual attack had but just begun, when Walter flung his firebrand. The blazing stick had struck Askimé’s attacker on the head, and had made him loose his hold. It had frightened the rest of the beasts. Then Neil’s quick and lucky shot had killed the one wolf almost instantly. The dead animal proved, – as the voices of the pack had already betrayed, – that the attackers were not the small, cowardly prairie beasts, but big, gray timber wolves.

“It was you, Walter, who saved Askimé’s life,” Louis exclaimed gratefully. “I didn’t dare take aim. I couldn’t tell which was wolf and which dog. I fired over their heads, hoping to frighten the wicked brutes. But you saved Askimé. Come, brave fellow,” he said to the dog. “You shall sleep in the lodge with me the rest of the night.”

“Will the wolves come back, do you think?” asked Walter.

“If they do, the dogs will warn us. But I think they will not trouble us again. They have lost their leader, and they are well frightened.”

The boys were so thoroughly aroused that it was some time before they could go to sleep again. But they heard no more of the wolves, and finally dropped off, first Neil, then Louis, and finally Walter. Between his two companions, Walter slept more warmly than on the night before, though he woke several times when the fire had to be replenished.