Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 156: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- - - 4 voice broke with rasping shri'Iness on the quiet. -_ = Wan-n-n-nh!”’ French Louey froze in his tracks. Cold chills ran down his back. His mouth opened, his eyes bulged. his ears worked, and his boney hands closed down on his stock and barrel. “ Sacre!” he gasped. scoundrel! Blue jay-—! feex— He threw his rifle up. As he did so the blue jay flitted a rod into the mass of ever- greens and began to scream, call, whisper, and jeer. The cry of alarm was taken up far and wide by red squirrels and other jays, and a flock of chickadees, in the jo- vial innocence of their companionable hearts. came to join the excitement: one of them came plumping down onto the brim of French Louey’s hat and tipped over to look upside down into his eyes. The man heard a faint crash: he heard a rattle of horns on standing timber; he heard a branch break; he heard, not a hun- dred yards distant, the moose racing through the close-growing trunks. “Der he goes!” French Louey gasped. ‘In two minutes I catch heem, by Gar! Old Hang-Nose gone—I t’ank you, Mee- staire Plue Jay! Oh, yeh! I t’ank you!” He turned to storm homeward to his trap line camp, and, arriving there, he sat mo- rosely for hours by the stick-fed fire in his wigwam. When at last he bobbed out to fell some white birch and block them off for winter firewood, he muttered and cursed under his breath while he slammed the splitting blade in deep, or sent the cutting edge into the soft, white wood. He glow- ered at the visiting chickadees, and threw hips at the impudent red squirrels. He sighed with angry appreciation at the blue javs and whisky jacks which came bobbing and pirouetting around. “Dat ol’ Hang-Nose.” the trapper gasped. “ Nex’ tam. by Gar!” He had h’s trap line to lay down for his business of life. He scurried through the woods, dropping a trap at each old cubby, or stopping to build a new one where in- “ Dat tamn plue yy 3? blazed. Light of pack. | age of intentions, he we valley of boiling prings fe _ IT need dat meat. » Salc the rabbits, grouse, and fish whic hung up. “ Nothing lak bull moose t a man strong!” a He found and followed the big fello tracks. They led through open burning, across springy swamps of caribou moss, — through ridge gaps and into windfall where the down timber was laid in heaps—top on top. French Louey paused at the thicke which covered acres. He sat down to scratch his chin; he whispered to himself; then he heard a crackle of dead sticks, @ crash of breasted timber; he sprang to his feet, sprang to a sloping spruce trunk, and ran agilely to see the better. He saw a great, black figure, with bright yellow antlers of enormous spread, with tawny legs plowing through the tumble down tops. With a cackling shriek he threw up his carbine, but even that slight weight cost him his balance. He tipped, tilted, wavered with both hands, and a foot sprawling in the air against the sky line. Then he fell ignominiously into the bent limbs of an underlying balsam twelve or fifteen feet beneath. *“Sacré! Sacré?”’ he squealed. bleau—hi-i! By Gar!” Barked shins, insulted dignity, and side- long embarrassment settled upon French Louey in equal proportions. Old Hang- Nose was a devil; he was a wizard: he was malignant, like a carcajou; and he was in league with the laughing jays. No use try- ing to bother with such a scalawag as that! The trapper slunk away back to his own line and quietly shot a yearling bull, dressed out the meat, slit it into foot-long ropes and salted them in layers on the inside of the short-haired skin. After two days, in which the meat up the salt, he washed the a’kali from strips, piece by piece. He swung the on long, slender sticks, which ih | comicb a le Para an t 2,8 } ooks.com