rs 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 sa