The Red Fox appeared in another strange Northern earlier in November 1947. The author is not known this time but L. B. Cole drew the strip as well. (Was it Gardner F. Fox?) “The Fangs of Folly” begins with Homer Trevor, an archaeologist going into the local burial grounds despite warnings from Blackhair. The old native tells him that Takuma, dread old Spirit of the Woods, will kill him. Trevor write this off as Eskimo superstition. Trevor disappears.
Spring comes and Barbe Toutain goes to the Mountie station. She is surprised to find the sergeant in charge is Jeffrey Fox, known as the Red Fox. Barbe recalls that Fox arrested her uncle last year. Barbe thinks Fox hates her people. Fox tells her he was just doing his job. Toutain reports that Takuma has been raiding her traps, destroying the animals they eat and spreading disease. The spirit leaves no tracks except for the single mark of Takuma. The monster flies through the sky at night.
Days later Rex Fox and Barbe arrive in the Sea Ledge area. The men tell Fox the same story, and express their anger over the arrest of Toutain. Red dismisses their threats and goes in search of Takuma. He looks at the small circular marks of the monster and decides they are the tracks of stilts. Takuma is only a human agent, trying to scare the trappers. While he is following the trail, Toutain, brother of the man Fox arrested last year, tries to convince the others to kill the Mountie.
At the end of the trail, Red Fox finds Homer Trevor, armed and frightened. Trevor tells Fox about the men who have imprisoned him in a cave. Chinook Joe and his companions took his rockets and used them to convince the locales it was Takuma in the sky. Chinook Joe appears suddenly.
Meanwhile Barbe Toutain is worried for Red Fox. She knows she should hate him but another emotion is growing inside her. She arrives in time to see Chinook Joe shoots the Mountie. She tries to scratch his eyes out. But Red Fox is not dead. Trevor had given Red a string of fangs from the artifacts he found in the cave. The bullet bounced off the fangs. Chinook Joe changes tactics. He will take the fangs and get rich with them. Red Fox tells Joe he is going to die from the poison on the fangs. We have our titular Fangs of Folly. The dodge gives him time to punch Joe and arrest him.
Toutain still plans to kill the Mountie, after the fur robbers are dealt with. Red Fox warns him to back off. He is protected by the Spirit of the Woods. Toutain laughs at him. A bolt of light flies from the cave and knocks him down. Only later, after Fox and the prisoners leave, does he realize it was one of the rockets the robbers used.
As with most strange Northerns of this type, “The Fangs of Folly” and the Spirit of the Woods proves to be a Scooby-Doo fake. The description of Takuma is very close to that of both the Wendigo in Algernon Blackwood’s story (1908), and the weird trapping monster in Jim Kjelgaard’s “The Thing From the Barrens” (Weird Tales, September 1945). This writer found fairly clever ways to make the circular marks and the flying phantom, though the French trappers are easily fooled. I would love to see those villains walking around in the bush on stilts….
Manhunt Comics can be read for free at DCM.