Evening star., 1941-08-31

But they were so blind, these mounties. For
their tracker they preferred big man who, by
making faces, could scare babies; one whose
talk had the empty bluster of the wind which
swept down from the Barren Grounds; one so
lacking in woods lore that he could not track
caribou through snow.
That was to say, the police preferred ns6tts
Andre They were going to make him official
tracker for the Fort Endurance post. They
were unless Poeon Baptiste could prove to
them what bold heart beat within his stumpy
frame; what fmness, what resolution, what
woods-cunning lay behind his mild eyes, his
cherubc, smoked-wood face.
In contemplating the changed sign, Poleon
remained charitable in his feelings toward the
madman. Under the weight of northern soil
tudes he had known men to break before Poor
shake brains, they but followed the dictates of
phantom voices they alone could understand.
But if the mailman had no murder in his
heart, he had it in his hands! The unhappy crea-
ture had struck first in the Sweetgrass Hills.
telling his brother with broadaxe. Seventy
miles away on Running Wolf Creek, he had
struck again, his rife dropping an Indian lad
who was fishing from his canoe. The madman
had stolen the canoe and thereafter his gibber-
ing laughter - and his callous rifle - had
sounded on many waterways.
Loo inept to hold to the mad killers trail.
Andre had followed Poleon, clinging to him
like a shadow through all the Big Thunder
land, into the valley of the Okopotowee and
now at last into this muskeg region of inter
laced thickets and spider webbed waterways so
remote that half the streams had never been
named
That gr0s one had even lolled in his canoe
and made taunting remarks when Poleon. at
the portages, drew up and laboriously searched
the landwash for signs of the mad killers pass
ing In the end Poleon had been forced to make
an arrangement" sharing his campfire with
n6fis Andre Waugh, but the arrangement was
one of bitter taste However, two campfires
winking side by side through the night we're
great stupidity, surely doubling the amount
of smoke and fire for warning to the killer
This morning Andre had not arisen to follow
Poleon. That of itself was not strange; the trail
was now 50 hot Andre could follow it alone. The
puzzling thing was that now, with every minute
counting, Andre had so placidly allowed Poleon
to gain this head start.
Mile after mile he swept along through the
clearing mist, and gave himself up to exulta-
ton. But as time went on and the canoe of m6fis
Andre did not appear in sight, disturbing
thought kept crowding in the back of his mind
The thought pushed and swelled, grew finally
into monstrous thing &. and Poleon drove
his canoe ashore on pea-gravel bar and sat
there trembling his soul sick from horrible
knowledge.
In the first place, there we're all the little
things of last night at their camp just above the
sgnpost island: Andres unnatural manner, his
curious nervousness, his so so-mocking prediction
that Poleon would never get the tracking job
But most of all there was the lie he had told
about his wet clothes. He had fallen in the
water, he said. But when man falls in water,
the water splashes 1t does not wet him evenly
all around as when he wades Andre had been
evenly wet to the waist - the depth of the
water between shore and signpost island!
The absence of canoe marks on the gravelly