The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist #2)(13)

Before that, Chanler had been seen with Larose at the chief outfitting shop on Main Street. (The clerk recognized Warthrop’s description of his colleague.) Chanler had paid for their supplies—ammunition, a tent, bedding, and the like—and when asked what was their game, Larose had winked and cagily replied, “We be goin’ after the Old One of the Woods.”

The clerk chuckled now, and added, “I knew what he was about with that, and sure enough, next he asks if we’ve got any silver bullets! ‘For what do you need silver bullets?’ I ask, but I know why he’s askin’. . . . Say, that Chanler—is he the one they was looking for couple weeks back? Whole troop of the NWMP were through here looking for some big shot that got lost in the bush, I recall.”

On the boardwalk outside, Warthrop shook his head ruefully.

“I am a fool, Will Henry. The NWMP is the first place we should have asked.”

He obtained directions from a man loitering outside the blacksmith shop, and we dashed across the dusty thoroughfare, dodging dray and carriage, to the other side, where the long shadows of late afternoon lay. We hopped over the steaming mounds of horse manure and slid through a small knot of miners standing in front of the tavern, fresh in town from their subterranean digs, their faces as black as players in a minstrel show, the whites of their eyes startlingly bright, each wearing a gun strapped to his waist. From the open door tinny music floated onto the street, faint and ethereal, unnervingly cheery, interrupted suddenly by what sounded to my anxious ears like a gunshot, only to resume again to the accompaniment of raucous laughter.

We ducked into the offices of the North-West Mounted Police, the precursor to the Royal Canadian Mounties. A strapping young sergeant dressed in a crisp red uniform rose from his desk.

“May I help you gentlemen?”

“I sincerely hope so,” replied the doctor. “I am looking for an American by the name of Dr. John Chanler. I understand you’ve been advised of his disappearance.”

The sergeant nodded, and his eyes narrowed slightly. “Are you a friend of Dr. Chanler?”

“I am. His wife asked that I look into the matter.”

“Well,” the man said with a careless shrug of his broad shoulders, “you are free to look, Mr.—”

“Doctor Warthrop.”

The Mountie’s eyes widened in astonishment. “Not the same Warthrop who’s the monster hunter?”

“I am a scientist in the natural philosophy of aberrant biology,” the doctor corrected him stiffly.

“Right—you hunt monsters! I’ve heard of you.”

“I’d no idea my reputation had preceded me so far north,” replied Warthrop dryly.

“Oh, my mother used to tell us children tales of your exploits—and I always thought it was to get us to mind!”

“Your mother? Then they were not my exploits. She must have been speaking of my father.”

“Well, whoever’s they were, they frightened the pants off us! But this Chanler—was he a monster hunter too?”

“His wife did not tell you?”

The man shook his head. “She said he’d come for the moose. He and his guide went in, and only the guide came out.”

“Pierre Larose.”

“Yes, that’s his name. Only he’s gone missing too, is my understanding.”

“So you were not able to question him?”

“Be the one I’d most like to lay my hands on, Dr. Warthrop, if I only knew where to put them. He’s the key to this whole riddle—last to see the man alive and then gone into thin air without even reporting it to us. We spent nearly a month in the bush trying to pick up their trail, all the way up to Sandy Lake and the Suckers encampment—”

“The Suckers?”

“Right. Jack Fiddler’s people.”

“Fiddler. I’ve heard that name before.”

“I’ll wager you have! He’s no doctor of monster philosophy, but he hunts them just the same. He’s a shaman, too—a medicine man—and fairly civilized for a savage. Speaks passing English. Used to work down here on the boats. Makes fiddles, that’s how he got his name.”

“And you questioned him about Chanler and Larose?”

“And got nothing from him—nothing of any use anyway. Told us the same thing Larose told Chanler’s poor wife—”

“Lepto lurconis,” murmured the doctor.

“Lepto what?”

He sighed. “The Wendigo.”

The sergeant nodded slowly, and then the connection dawned on him. His voice shook with wonder as he said, “You don’t mean to say—I never put any stock in those stories. Is that why you’ve come? It’s real?”

“Of course it isn’t real,” the doctor said irritably. “It’s a convenience, like the stories your mother told to frighten you into submission.”

“You mean those weren’t real either?”

“No, those probably were. It’s an entirely different species.”

“The Wendigo?”

“The stories. My good man, I understand Chanler is missing, but I’d hoped I might be able to dredge up information on Larose’s whereabouts . . .”

“You and half the town of Rat Portage. The man’s melted away like a puff of smoke.”