"That's right." Angela agreed, "and Freddie had better go and fetch in the Lapps and the horses before they are all frozen to death, while you and I prepare a hot meal."
The two men went off obediently about their appointed tasks and as the girls busied themselves with the cooking they discussed further measures for putting the fear of the devil into the Asiatics. 'The soldiers would certainly recommence their wood cutting operations as soon as daylight came and to wait until the following night to stage another ghostly attack, even if they drove the risen out of the camp again. simply meant that they would return once more the following day. To be really effective the next attack must take place in daylight, to convince the troops that the site they had chosen for their camp was haunted by day as well as by night, and it was Erika who thought of the poltergeist.
There was a good quantity of crockery in the house and the peculiarity of a poltergeist is that it has a passion for hurling china about. The plan entailed the sacrifice of a number of plates and dishes but they considered this would be well worth it if they could devise a means of making them fall from the shelves of the dresser and crash on the floor, apparently without human aid.
The dresser backed on to the stable and in the store room there were several reels of wire which the trapper had used for making snares. Angela suggested that if they bored tiny holes through the partition wall they might run wires underneath some of the crockery so that when the wires were jerked away the crockery would fall; then, even if the officer got up on to a chair to see what was causing these apparently inexplicable accidents, by the time he did so there would be no evidence for him to find as the wires would have been pulled away through the holes.
When Freddie came in he told them that he had duly stabled and fed the horses but that Bimbo, Mutt and Jeff with their dogs sleigh had entirely disappeared; so they could only suppose that the Lapps would turn up again in due course. Immediately the girls had outlined their plan to him he set to work with a gimlet from the tool chest, boring holes through the partition wall. They then sat down to the meal which was now ready.
After they had eaten Freddie went out to relieve Gregory, who came back and ate his belated supper while the girls went on boring the holes that Freddie had started and arranging their less valued pieces of crockery in the right positions near them. When Gregory had finished they explained to him what they wanted done with the wire. Going round to the stable, he pushed the loose ends from the reels through the holes to the girls in the living room where they adjusted them under the china. He then unreeled the lengths of wire, laying them under the stable doors and burying them in a shallow trench which he made with his boot in the snow as he went along, until all their extremities lay with the empty reels near a tree about a hundred and twenty yards from the back of the house.
Erika, who had read much more about black magic than any of the others, had made further plans by the time he had finished it. She declared that they must make the clearing appear as though a witches' Sabbath had been held in it, as that was better calculated to prevent the superstitious Asiatics from spending another night there than anything else. First they went to the soldiers' tents. Taking all they could find there they smashed everything smash able and scattered the things and pieces in every direction except in the centre of the clearing, which Erika said must be left free for the witches' circle. Gregory was then set to run round a central point, kicking up the snow right and left as he went and stamping it down in the middle of his track as though a crowd of mad people had danced round and round in a ring there. While he was occupied with this Erika asked Angela to take over the job of sentry for Freddie because she wanted a man's strength to help her to make a big snow effigy of a goat in the centre of the circle. When Freddie arrived she had already fetched a couple of shovels and, started work.
To have made an ordinary snow man would have been an easy matter, but to make anything that looked like a goat was far more difficult, even though they now had a bright moon to work by; so first they built a large, square base with a solid back to serve as a throne for the snow animal to sit on. Then they piled up a pillar of the hard, frozen snow out of which Erika sculptured with a carving knife the figure of the animal. When she had finished it did not look particularly like a goat, but its long pear shaped head and hoof like extremities definitely gave it the appearance of some sort of large beast and the slanting eye sockets, into which two fir cones had been stuck for pupils, gave it a most menacing and sinister expression.
Gregory was standing admiring her handiwork when, to their surprise, he announced: "I know that the Devil is supposed to appear in the form of a goat in Central Europe, but they don't have goats in these parts. The nature myths of the Arctic all make him take the form of a reindeer or a moose."
"Fine, darling, fine," Erika laughed. "That's all the better. We've got lots of reindeer antlers in the meat store. If you'll get me a pair I'll fix them on its head. I think, too, it would be more effective if we could blacken the brute a bit. What about some soot?"
Gregory fetched the antlers and Freddie succeeded in raking down half a bucket of soot from the flue in the chimney with which they black powdered the snow devil. By the time they had finished the moon was high above the trees and in its eerie, silver light the totem of age old evil seemed to radiate malignance even to its creators.
They spent another half hour in acting like demons themselves by pulling down the tents, ripping them to pieces, blunting the edges of the circular saws and smashing in the sides of the lorries with axes; but they did not interfere with the engines, as the last thing they wished to do was to rob the Russians of the means of making a speedy departure, and occult forces although at times mischievous and dangerous would hardly be likely to sabotage machinery hidden under the bonnets of the lorries. It was one o'clock in the morning when, chilled to the bone and exhausted with their labours but highly satisfied, they gathered again in the house.
When they were all thoroughly warmed up once more it was decided that the two girls should sleep the night through while the men took turns to watch. at the entrance to the camp; but they agreed that they must be clear of the house again by seven o'clock, although there would still be over three hours of darkness to go, in case the Russians plucked up courage to return first thing in the morning.
At six they were all up again. After a good, solid, hot breakfast they took great pains to dispose of any evidence that they had spent the night there but threw the officer's things all over the floor and turned the heavy table over on its side as though the poltergeist had been at work. Gregory fed the horses and led them back to the sleigh while Freddie dug a pit in the snow by the extremity of the wires which led into the house. Angela took up her position some distance to his right where she could see the front of the building and could signal to him without being seen from the camp. When Gregory returned all four of them settled down to wait.
It was half past ten before the Russians put in an appearance and then, even from a distance, Angela could see that the poor wretches were in an extremity of misery, from having had to spend the night out on the open road. Some of them were limping as though affected by frost bite in the feet; four of them were being carried by their comrades and all of them were bowed as though they no longer had the vitality to walk erect. Shambling through the snow they reached the edge of the clearing and halted there in a scared, silent huddle as they took in the devastated state of their camp and the grim, black figure that stood out so clearly against the dead whiteness of the ground.