by Guy Endore
“But, monsieur le maire, it is I who—”
“Not another word. We shall overlook it this time. Now get on the job and have those wolves dead within twenty-four hours and delivered at the mairie.”
“Oui, monsieur, only I was about to say that—”
“No, not a minute more than twenty-four hours.” And with that the mayor betook his majestic personage away, leaving Bramond thunderstruck and furious in the roadway.
“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything to that dolt of a shepherd. The thief—how could he play a scurvy trick like that?”
And even as he was standing there cursing the shepherd, up comes Le Vallon, shouting: “Bramond, mon vieux, where have you been? Have you heard the news? Everybody is looking for you. There are packs of wolves terrorizing the neighborhood. It’s worth as much as your life to take the forest road.”
“Shut up!” thundered Bramond.
Well, that at least is Bramond’s version of how the wolf was discovered. Vaubois’ shepherd, Crotez, of course, had another tale to tell, and since the whole village, with the exception of the people on the Galliez estate, had heard the exciting story from the shepherd, no one could be found to believe Bramond, no matter how often he explained.
“Why, Crotez brought the bodies here, to the mairie, I saw…”
“That only shows that he didn’t have any sense. The proper thing to do was not to disturb them but wait for the wolves to return.”
“But I told him myself—” he said to another.
“Ha, ha. My dear Bramond, we believe you, of course. What village in France can boast of a garde champêtre to equal ours?”
“I can point out to you the exact place where I found them.”
“So can everybody in the neighborhood by this time.”
Bramond paused and considered how an Indian tracker would deal with such a situation. No doubt he would have Vaubois’ shepherd unmasked in a moment. But as for himself he could see nothing to do to recover his prestige but to get those wolves. So he shouldered his gun and was off.
In the succeeding days nothing further was seen of the wolf or pack of wolves, though if the devil shows his tail when he is spoken of then the wolves ought certainly to have shown theirs, for nothing but wolves figured in the village conversations for the next week.
Then one day another lamb was found, its throat ripped open in just the same way, and its belly disemboweled. And the ducks and chickens continued to disappear from various homesteads, but particularly from the Galliez farmyard.
Various people, at various times, claimed to have seen the wolf. They were believed by some, but by most discredited. Toward autumn an incident occurred that brought the wolf mystery nearer home.
Little Pernette, coming home toward twilight from her uncle, who was sick, saw, as she came to the hedge of Vaubois’ buckwheat field, a huge dog, near as big as a calf. It came leaping at her. She screamed and ran. The heavy body of the animal cast itself at her and threw her down. Then she lost consciousness. When she awoke, it was quite dark, the full moon, dull red, stood above the horizon. Whimpering and trembling, she raced home and told her tale.
But she was so hysterical that she answered yes and no to questions that were alike or contradictory, and no one could make head or tail out of her account. Nevertheless, a portion of the village was stirred to action and the night was soon spangled with torches of farmers armed with pitchforks, all out after the wolf. Others, convinced that Pernette had been attacked by some harvest laborer, questioned the migratory farm help. Still others remained at home in fear, being certain that this was no ordinary wolf but the work of the devil.
Bramond, beside himself with ambition to kill the wolf and rehabilitate his prestige as a hunter, which hitherto had never been questioned, did not cease to tramp his district, both day and night. His cheeks caved in for lack of sleep. When his boy wanted to read to him of the mighty Indian hunters of America, he cut the little fellow short, gruffly. Directly after supper he had taken down his gun from the wall and was out. But never a sight of the wolf, though he followed every clue brought home by nervous villagers prone to mistake every shadow for a crouching wolf.
One night, it was just before dawn, he was traversing a melancholy flat, a fen blacked with pools of stagnant water. The ground was covered with heath and fern, but near the water grew dense masses of flag and bulrushes amongst which the dying night wind sighed drearily. He was deep in reverie, wooing a pipe-dream, in which he exhibited at the next fair a whole series of wolfskins. Suddenly he stood as if transfixed. Not fifty feet away was the wolf, there could be no doubt of it. It was humped up over its kill and the crunching of bones between his jaws could be heard through the stilly night.
Despite the hammering of his heart, Bramond sighted carefully, coolly calculated on the distance and fired. The wolf scampered through a pool of water and was off, its belly hugging the ground as it took long strides. Bramond nevertheless had time to reload and fired a second shot. Then he hastened after it, certain that he had at least wounded the beast, in fact expecting soon to come upon the body. For that he had missed completely at so short a distance never occurred to him.
And yet that was what had happened, for Bramond did not see the wolf again, and as day dawned and he returned to the site where he had shot at the beast, he could find no trace of blood, except that of the poor partridge which the wolf had been devouring. He took the mutilated bird home and puzzled over the bit of fluff, the crushed feathers clotted with blood.
And as he thought and sighed, an idea struck him and he pounded the table with his fist.
“Wife,” he cried, “a piece of wax!”
“What are you up to now?” she asked.
“Quick now!” he shouted.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” was her retort.
“Come now,” he said, “and stop talking. Ever since the day you persuaded me to marry you, your tongue hasn’t stopped wagging.”
She brought him a piece of wax and stood watching him carve a small portion into the shape of a bullet, modeling it carefully after one he had taken from his own stock of cartridges. And her tongue wagged on:
“I met that Josephine, I beg your pardon, Mme Caillet, this morning. What a high and mighty lady she has turned out to be. Who would think that she was the same Josephine who was glad to kiss your feet for a piece of bread. What are you making anyhow? And she told me that Bertrand was giving her a lot of trouble. He had no appetite and she wondered whether she ought to send him away to school. Of course he would have to go away eventually since he was to study medicine, but meanwhile perhaps he could continue to go to the village school. Well, I told her a thing or two. The village school was good enough for her and she never even succeeded in winning a single prize book, she was that dumb. The nerve of her. Will you kindly inform me what you are making that for? Are you just trying to mystify me? Well, they can’t pull the wool over my eyes. What do you suppose? Do you mean to say she married this Caillet man, whoever he was, the day she got to Paris? How else did she bring home a baby six months old? And since when are married servants retained along with their children? And why should her boy be going to study medicine? Where is all the money coming from?”
“From M Galliez, of course,” said Bramond. “And stop leaning over my shoulder, I can’t work.”
“God only knows what you’re doing anyhow. Well, of course M Galliez is handing over the money. Did you think I didn’t know that? And if you think I don’t know why, you are mistaken too. I’ll bet anything that Josephine hasn’t got both legs in one stocking.”
“Stop your twaddle. You women always have things figured out.”
“You men are as stupid as geese. You fall for anything. And why do you think M Galliez came back from the seminary at Langres? Wasn’t he going to be a priest? But the call of family ties was a little too much, I suppose. His little Josephine needed him.”
“Stop supposing so many things, and go fetch me your lit
tle silver crucifix. You women ought to be ashamed of yourselves, tearing a man’s character to pieces like that.”
“What are you going to do with my crucifix? I don’t want it spoiled. That was blessed for me by the archbishop himself, when I went to Avallon.”
“All the better. We can’t have too much blessing on it.”
“Before I give it to you I want to know what you’re up to.”
“You’ll find out sooner or later, and have plenty of time to talk about it.”
“Now mind if you lose it, you’ll never hear the end of it.” Reluctantly she fetched him the desired article. Now he embedded his waxen bullet in a cake of wet clay.
“Some hairs from your head!” he ordered. Too surprised to resist, she permitted him to draw a few from her head. He laid a number of these in various directions across the bullet and on top of all laid another cake of wet clay, pressing the two firmly together. Then he drew out the hair.
“For the air to escape,” he explained briefly.
“What air?” she asked. For the first time her tongue was beginning to fail her.
He disregarded her question, being busy digging a small conduit through the clay down to the bullet in the center. This done he set the whole to roast on the stove. When the mold was dry and hard and the wax had all run out, leaving a perfect hollow model in its place, he melted up the silver crucifix, to the loud shouting and weeping of his spouse. And thus was the silver bullet cast. It required only a little filing, sandpapering and polishing to make it perfect.
“Try and escape this,” Bramond smirked. “A silver bullet, blessed by the archbishop, melted down from a holy crucifix. Beelzebub himself would fall before this.”
And he took up his eternal watching and waiting. A deer might nibble at his back, he would not have wasted the single precious bullet that he had in the rod of his gun. A braconnier might run off with fifty pheasants. Gleaners might surreptitiously wield the scythe and Bramond would do nothing.
Winter came and still the wolf had not come within range of his eyes. Not that he had left the neighborhood, for reports of missing birds and lambs were still numerous as ever. But the animal seemed to be avoiding Bramond.
But one wintry night, when the ground was covered with snow and the sky was overcast, he did come upon it. The animal, intent upon its kill, had not noticed the guard; moreover, the wind was blowing away from it.
Bramond muttered a short prayer and advanced as cautiously as he could. When within twenty paces, so close that he could see every detail of the animal, its heavy coat of gray-brown, its sharp ears pointing forward, its large eyes glowing in the dark like dull marsh-fire, then he dropped to his knee and took aim. The animal, suddenly conscious of impending danger, looked up and sniffed the wind. It gathered itself to run off, but already Bramond had fired. The beast collapsed, but even as Bramond was exulting: “Got you that time!” it was up and off, fleeing through the low scrub of the forested hillside which had recently been thinned out.
Bramond was hot after it. The tracks were easy to follow in the snow and a heavy trail of blood made it even easier. But the wolf was traveling fast, despite his injury which must be mortal, so Bramond thought. But the splotches of blood diminished to drops, sunk in the snow at rarer and rarer intervals. Then the blood spoor ceased entirely, but the animal’s paws still made their legible mark. The low bushes were in its favor, but the hillside sloped down to a road and across the road was an open field, so that the animal could not get very far out of sight any more. “Limping on the left leg, too,” the guard noted with satisfaction.
When the garde champêtre came down to the road, however, and looked across the fields, there was nothing to see. The road had been traveled on lately and the following of any trail on it was impossible, but it did not seem to Bramond that any wild beast would take to a traveled road. He confidently expected that it would have crossed, but on the opposite side of the road there was no sign of any animal tracks. Had it doubled on itself and reëntered the bushes? Or had it followed the road?
At a loss, Bramond stood in the middle of the roadway and gazed around. Nothing but the silent night surrounded him. He could hear nothing but his own heavy breathing. Startled by the silence and a little unconvinced of the reality of the brief episode, he hesitated. Which way? Home? Impossible! Why, he had almost had his hand on the beast. But where should he go? He stood irresolute until the cold warned him to move. Slow shivers began to crawl up his back as he walked off toward his house. He kept looking over his shoulder. It seemed to him as he walked that soft padded feet were being placed directly into his own footsteps as soon as his feet rose from the ground.
Then a genuine fear seized him and he began to run, and still he heard the soft patter of paws on the hard snow. And an old story came to his mind of the wush-hound and the pad-foit, those terrible animals that live in abandoned graves in cemeteries. And though he was ordinarily a man of strong nerves, all his muscles weakened. He tottered on limply. His gun was too heavy in his hands. Recklessly he cast it away. No sooner had he done so than he saw the wolf in front of him. It was running by the side of the road. And every once in a while it would dip back into the darkness beside the road only to reappear a moment later.
He cursed himself for the fool and coward that he was, gathered his last reserve of strength and ran back for his gun which was lying on the road where he had thrown it. He picked it up and raced back. Where was that wolf now? Gone! No, there it was. Up went his gun and bang! The beast crumpled up in its tracks. Rolled over and stirred no more. With a hoarse cry, Bramond ran up to it and, raising his gun which he held by the rod, he brought down the butt end on the wolf’s head. Bones crushed through like paper, and blood, brains and teeth flew in every direction.
He wiped the cold sweat from his brow. “Thank God!” he muttered. He kicked the body. Where did I hit the first time? Then only he noticed that around the neck of the animal, hidden deep in fur, was a collar. He recognized the beast.
They found him the next morning lying beside the body of César.
Bramond lay severely ill for two weeks. Then he began to recover. When visitors were permitted, it was the mayor himself who deigned to enter his humble cottage and congratulate the guard. “We owe you a deep apology,” he said, “and many thanks. You have done well, and I shall see to it that they hear of this at the prefecture.”
Weak and happy, Bramond could only nod. There were tears in his eyes.
The mayor rose to go. But first he came up to the head of the bed and patted Bramond on the shoulder: “Who knows,” he said with a big smile, “there might be a medal in it for you.”
Even his wife was happy with him. “But I want that silver bullet, she said, “it belongs to me. And now it will be doubly dear to me.”
“It’s strange they didn’t find it in the body,” he said. “But when I am well I shall go look for it. It can’t be hard to find. So it was Vaubois’ dog all along,” he mused. “You know that was my very first thought. No sign of any wolf since I killed César?”
“None,” she confirmed. “Not even a chick missing.”
Chapter Seven
That then was the great wolf-hunt of Mont d’Arcy, which lasted a little over six months and made every citizen a detective and a hero, at any rate after the culprit had been discovered.
Josephine, for one, was very glad when one morning it was reported to her that the wolf had been slain by Bramond and it was nothing but Vaubois’ dog César.
“This wolf-hunt,” she said, “was getting just a little bit too much. Bertrand has been complaining that he dreams about it every night.”
She hastened to Bertrand’s room, and cried: “Up, lazybones! The wolf has been killed and you’ve no more nightmares to fear.”
Bertrand turned a flushed face toward his mother: “I don’t want to get up, mamma. I don’t feel well. And my leg hurts so badly that I can’t move it.”
“What’s this? What’s this now? You’ve always
got some excuse to lie in bed. I declare, I don’t know what’s become of the good Bertrand I used to have. He used to be so well-behaved. Ate everything that was set before him with never a question and went to sleep nicely and woke up feeling fine. Come now, child, let me see your leg that hurts and then we’ll get out and take a brisk walk to the village. It’s a fine cold day.”
She pulled the covers away from him while he moaned: “It’s that one,” and motioned to his left limb. “Oh my!” she shouted. The leg did indeed look bad and there was clotted blood around the calf, and what seemed like an ugly wound.
She ran out calling for M Aymar. He was down below in his study, but answered her call at once. As soon as he had seen the state of the leg, he ordered her to run and fetch the doctor. “Get Guillemin to race the bay for all she is worth,” he shouted after her as she fled down the stairs.
Françoise, mumbling: “Oh, mon Dieu, quel malheur, quel malheur!” busied herself fetching warm water and linen to wash the wound. Aymar undertook the latter task himself.
The wound was a deep hole, as if, that was Aymar’s first thought, the lad had fallen on a pitchfork: “Have you been jumping from the hayloft in the barn?” he queried.
“Aïe!” said Bertrand, “that hurts. No, I wasn’t jumping in the barn.”
There was a smaller wound on the other side of the calf, near the shin bone, and this only confirmed Aymar’s first impression. For when he washed that area, he noticed that there was something hard just flush to the skin. “My heavens,” he said to himself, “there’s a piece of the pitchfork imbedded in the flesh.” He pushed down on the skin with his thumbs to squeeze the object out. “Sure enough,” he said as a shiny point appeared out of the opening of the skin, “it’s the point of a tine.” Despite Bertrand’s howls he squeezed harder, until he found that his nails could get a purchase on the metal and drag it out.
At the moment, fortunately, Françoise happened to be out. She had gone to fetch more water and linen rags. This was indeed fortunate, for Aymar would not have known what to say had she been there, when he took out what he thought was the point from the tine of a pitchfork and discovered that it was a bullet, Bramond’s silver bullet of which the whole village had been informed.
