That night Marcel camped at the river's mouth and watched the gray waters of the great Bay drown the sinking sun. Somewhere, far down the bold East Coast the Great Whale emptied into the salt "Big Water" of the Crees. He remembered having heard the old men at the post say that the Big Salmon lay four "sleeps" of fair weather to the north—four days of hard paddling, as the Company canoes travel, if the sea was flat and the wind light. But if he were wind-bound, as was likely heading south in the spring, it might take weeks. He had a hundred pounds of cured fish and could wait out the wind, but the thought of Julie, who by this time must have learned from his partners of his mad journey, made Jean anxious to reach the post. He preferred to be welcomed living than mourned as dead. He wondered how deeply she would feel it—his death. Ah, if she only cared for him as he loved her! Well, she should love him in time, when he had become avoyageurof the Company, with a house at the post, he told himself, as he patted his shy puppy before turning into his blankets.
The second day out he was driven ashore under gray cliffs by a south-wester and spent the succeeding three days in overcoming the shyness of the hulking puppy, who, in the gentleness of the new master, found swift solace for the loss of her shaggy kinsmen of the Husky camp. Already she had learned that the human hand could caress as well as wield a stick, and for the first time in her short existence, was initiated into the mystery and delight of having her ears rubbed and back scratched by this master who did not kick her out of the way when she sprawled in his path. And because of her beauty, and in memory of Fleur Marcel, the mother he had loved, he named her Fleur.
When the sea flattened out after the blow, Marcel launched his canoe, and, with his dog in the bow, continued south. Not a wheeling gull, flock of whistling yellow-legs, or whiskered face of inquisitive seal, thrust from the water only as quickly to disappear, escaped the notice of the eager puppy. Passing low islands where teal and pin-tail rose in clouds at his approach, driving Fleur into a frenzy of excitement, at last he turned in behind a long island paralleling the coast.
For two days Jean travelled down the strait in the lee of this island and knew when he passed out into open water and saw in the distance the familiar coast of the Whale River mouth, that he hadtravelled through the mystic Manitounuk, the Esquimos' Strait of the Spirit. The following afternoon off Sable Point he entered the clear water of the Great Whale and once again, after ten months' absence, saw on the bold shore in the distance the roofs of Whale River.
There was a lump in the throat of Jean Marcel as he gazed at the distant fur-post. That little settlement, with its log trade-house and church of the Oblat Fathers, the last outpost of the Great Company on the bleak East Coast, which for two centuries had defied the grim north, stood for all he held most dear—was home. There, in the church burial ground enclosed by a slab fence, three spruce crosses marked the graves of his father, mother and brother. There in the Mission House, built by Cree converts, lived Julie Breton.
As the young flood swept him up-stream he wondered if already he had been counted as lost by his friends at the post—for it was July; whether the thoughts of Julie Breton sometimes wandered north to the lad who had disappeared into the Ungava hills on a mad quest; or if, with the others, she had given him up as starved or drowned—numbered him with that fated legion who had gone out into the wide north never to return.
Nearing the post, the canoe began to pass the floats of gill-nets set for whitefish and salmon. Hecould now see the tepees of the Whale River Crees, dotting the high shores, and below, along the beach, the squat skin lodges of the Huskies, with their fish scaffolds and umiaks. The spring trade was on.
Beaching his canoe at the Company landing, where he was welcomed as one returned from the dead by two post Crees, Marcel, leading his dog by a rawhide thong, sought the Mission House.
At his knock the door was opened by a girl with dusky eyes and masses of black hair, who stared in amazement at thevoyageur.
"Julie!" he cried.
Then she found her voice, while the blood flushed her olive skin.
"Jean Marcel!vous êtes revenu!You have come back!" exclaimed the girl, continuing the conversation in French.
"Oh, Jean! We had great fear you might not return." He was holding both her hands but, embarrassed, she did not meet his eager eyes seeking to read her thoughts.
"Come in,M'sieu le voyageur!" and she led him gayly into the Mission. "Henri, Père Henri!" she called. "Jean Marcel has returned from the dead!"
"Jean, my son!" replied a deep voice, and Père Breton was vigorously embracing the man he had thought never to see again.
"Father, your greeting is somewhat warmer than that of Julie," laughed the happy youth, as the bearded priest surveyed him at arm's length.
"Ah, she has spoken much of you, Jean, this spring. None the worse for the long voyage, my son?" he continued. "You will be the talk of Whale River; the Crees said you could not get through. And you got your dogs? We have only curs here, except those of the Huskies, and they are very dear."
"The Huskies would not sell their dogs, Father. They were bringing them to Whale River."
Then Marcel sketched briefly to his wondering friends the history of his wanderings and his meeting with the Huskies on the Big Salmon.
As he finished the tale of his escape from the camp with his puppy, and later from the ambush, Julie Breton's dark eyes were wet with tears.
"Oh, Jean Marcel, why did you take such risks? You might have starved—they might have killed you!"
His eyes lighted with tenderness as they met the girl's questioning face.
"I had to have dogs, Julie. I must save my credit with the Company. It was the only way."
"Let me see your puppy! Where is she?" demanded the girl.
Jean led his friends outside the Mission, wherehe had fastened his dog. The wild puppy shrank from the strangers, the hair bristling on her neck, as Julie impulsively thrust a hand toward the dog's handsome head.
"Oh, but she is cross!" she exclaimed. "What is her name?"
"Fleur; it was my mother's."
"Too nice a name for such an impolite dog!"
Jean stroked Fleur's head as she crouched against his legs muttering her dislike of strangers. At his caress, her warm tongue sought his hand.
"There," he said proudly, his white teeth flashing in a grin at Julie, "you see here is one who loves Jean Marcel."
At the invitation of Père Breton, thevoyageurshut his dog in the Mission stockade, where she would be free from attack by the post Huskies and safe from some covetous Cree, and gladly took possession of an empty room in the building.
As the grim fastnesses reaching away to the north and east and south in limitless, ice-locked solitude, had wakened to the magic touch of spring, so the little post at Whale River had quickened with life at the advent of June with the spring trade. For weeks, before the return of Marcel, the canoes of the Crees had been coming in daily from winter trapping grounds in far valleys. Around the tepees, which dotted the post clearing like mushrooms, groups of dark-skinned women, heads wrapped in gaudy shawls, laughed and gossiped, while the shrill voices of romping children filled the air, for the lean moons of the long snows had passed and the soft days returned.
Swart hunters from Lac d'Iberville, half-breed Crees from the Whispering Hills and the Little Whale watershed, belted with colored Company sashes, wearing beaded leggings and moccasins, smoked and talked of the trade with wildvoyageursfrom Lac Bienville, the Lakes of the Winds, and the Starving River headwaters in the caribou barrens. From a hundred unmapped valleys they hadjourneyed to the Bay to trade their fox and lynx, their mink and fisher and marten, for the goods of the Company.
Below, along the beach, Huskies from Richmond Gulf and the north coast, from the White Bear and the Sleeping Islands, who had brought ivory of the walrus, pelts of the white fox, seal, and polar bear, and sealskin boots, which only their women possess the art of making waterproof, were camped in low skin tepees, their priceless dogs tied up and under constant guard. But while the camp of the Esquimos was a bedlam of noisy huskies, the quarters of the Crees in the post clearing, formerly overrun by brawling sled-dogs, were now a place of peace. The plague of the previous summer had left the Indians but a scattering of curs.
Carrying his fur-pack and outfit to the Mission, Marcel sought the trade-house. Passing the tepees of the Crees, he was forced to stop and receive the congratulations of the admiring hunters on his safe return from his "longue traverse" through the land of demons, which had been the gossip of the post since the arrival of Joe and Antoine.
When his partners appeared, to stare in amazement at the man they had announced as dead, Jean made them wince as he gripped their hands.
"Bo'-jo', Joe! Bo'-jo', Antoine!" he laughed. "You see de Windigo foun' Jean Marcel too toughto eat! He ees good fr'en' to me now. De Husky t'ink me devil too."
"I nevaire t'ink to see you alive at Whale Riviere, Jean Marcel!" cried the delighted Antoine.
"Did you get de dog?" asked the practical Piquet.
"Onlee one petite pup; de Husky would not trade." Then Jean hurriedly described his weeks on the Salmon.
As he entered the door of the long trade-house he was seized by a giant Company man.
"By Gar! Jean Marcel!" cried Jules Duroc, his swart face lighting with joy as he crushed the wanderer in a bear hug. "We t'ink you sure starve out een de bush! You fin' de Beeg Salmon headwater? You see de Windigo?"
"Oui, I fin' de riviere for sure, Jules; but de Windigo he scared of me. I tell heem Jean Marcel ees fr'en' of Jules Duroc."
The laughter in the doorway drew the attention of two men descending the ladder from the fur-loft.
"Well, as I live, Jean Marcel!" cried Colin Gillies, the factor, and he wrung the hand of the son of his old head man until Marcel grimaced with pain.
"You're sure good for sore eyes, Jean; we were about giving you up!" added Andrew McCain, the clerk, seizing Jean's free hand.
"Bon jour, M'sieu Gillies! Bon jour, Andrew! Dey say I leeve my bones on de Beeg Salmon; de Husky shoot at me; but—Tiens! I am here!"
"What? You had trouble with the Huskies?"
"Oui, dey t'o't I was a devil, because I come down riviere from de Bad-Lands, but Kovik, he talk to dem an' I stay. Tell dem I come from Whale Riviere. Den dey get mad because I feesh salmon at de rapide and mak' trouble; and poor Kovik, he tell dem dat I am bad spirit, so I can get away."
Jean laughed heartily at the memory of Kovik's dilemma. "Dey mus' t'ink poor Kovik ees damn liar by dees tam." Then he added soberly, "But he save my life."
Seated with his three friends, Marcel told of his struggle to reach the Salmon, his meeting with the Esquimos, and escape with his dog.
"So you got a dog after all, Jean? But you were crazy to take a chance with those Huskies; they won't stand trespassing on their fisheries and they were shy of you because you came from the headwaters. I'm glad you didn't kill that pair, much as they deserved it. It would have made trouble later."
"Good old Kovik! We won't forget him," added McCain.
"No, that we will not," agreed Gillies. "He thought a lot of your father, Jean."
"Wal," said Jean proudly, "I weel have good dog-team een two year. Dat pup, she ees wort' all de work an' trouble to get her."
"You're lucky," said Gillies. "It's mighty hard on our hunters not to have good dogs, but they couldn't pay the Huskies' price. The Crees only took three for breeding purposes, and six cost us a thousand in trade. The rest were taken to Fort George and East Main."
The days at the Mission with Père Breton and Julie raced by—hours of unalloyed happiness for Jean after ten months in the "bush." Not a day passed that did not find him romping with the great puppy who had learned to gaze at her tall master through slant eyes eloquent with love. Each morning when he visited the Mission fish nets and his own, the puppy rode in the bow of the canoe. Each afternoon, often accompanied by Julie Breton, they went for a run up the river shore. Man and dog were inseparable.
When he heard that Kovik had arrived, Jean brought Fleur down to the shore, to find the family absent from their lodge. To Marcel's amazement, his puppy at first failed to recognize her brothers, who, yelping madly, rushed her in a mass.
With flattened ears, and mane stiffened on neckand back, their doughty sister met them half-way. Bowling one over, she shouldered another to the ground, where she threatened him with a fierce display of teeth. And not until their worried mother, made fast to a stake, had recognized her lost daughter and lured her within reach of her tongue, did the nose of Jean's puppy reveal to her the identity of her kin. Then there was a mad frolic in which she bullied and roughed her brothers as in the forgotten days before the master with the low voice and the hand that never struck her, took her away in his canoe.
When Kovik appeared in his umiak with his squat wife and family, there was a general handshaking.
"How you leeve my fr'en' on de Salmon, Kovik?"
The Husky gravely shook his head.
"Kovik have troub' wid young men you shoot. Dey say Kovik bad spirit too. You not hurt by dem?"
"Dey miss me an' I dreef down riviere an' ambush dem. I could keel dem easy but eet mak' eet bad for you. Here ees tabac, an' tea an' sugar for de woman. I tell M'sieu Gillies w'at you do for Jean Marcel."
When Jean had distributed his gifts, Fleur came trotting up, but to his delight refused to allow Kovik to touch her.
"Huh! Dat you' dog!" chuckled the Husky.
"Oui, she ees my dog, now," laughed Jean, and his heart went out to the puppy who already knew but one allegiance.
The spring trade at Whale River was nearing its end. One by one the tepees in the post clearing disappeared as, each day, canoes of Cree hunters started up-river for lakes of the interior, to net fish for the coming winter. Already the umiaks of the Esquimos peopled with women and children had followed the ebb-tide down to the great Bay, bound for their autumn hunting camps along the north coast.
When Jean Marcel had traded his fur and purchased what flour, ammunition and other supplies he needed to carry him through the long snows of the coming winter, he found that a substantial balance remained to his credit on the books of the Company; a nest egg, he hoped, for the day when, perchance, as avoyageurof the Company with a house at the post, he might stand with Julie at his side and receive the blessing of the good Père Breton. But Jean realized that that day was far away. Before he might hope to be honored by the Company with the position and trust his father had so long enjoyed, he knew he must prove his mettle and hisworth; for the Company crews and dog-runners, entrusted with the mails, the fur-brigades and Company business in general, are men chosen for their intelligence, stamina and skill as canoemen and dog-drivers.
When he had packed his last load of winter supplies from the trade-house to the Mission, he said with a laugh to Julie:
"Julie, we have made a good start, you and I. We have credit of three hundred dollars with the Company."
The olive skin of Julie Breton flushed to the dusky crown of hair, but she retorted with spirit:
"You are counting your geese before they are shot, M'sieu Jean. Merci! But I am very happy with Père Henri."
Père Breton's laugh interrupted Jean's reply. "Yes, my son. Julie is right. You are too young, you two, to think of anything but your souls."
"Some day, Julie, I will be a Company man and then you will listen to Jean Marcel," and the lad who had cherished the memory of the girl's oval face through the long winter and taken it with him into the dim, blue Ungava hills, left the Mission with head erect and swinging stride.
"Jean, when are you going back to the bush?" inquired Gillies, as Marcel entered the trade-house.
"My partners and I go next week, maybe."
"Well, I want you to take a canoe to Duck Island for me. We're short-handed here, and you have just come down that coast. I promised some Huskies to leave a cache of stuff there this summer."
Marcel's dark features reddened with pride. He had been put in charge of a canoe bound on Company business. His crossing to the Big Salmon had marked him at Whale River as a canoeman of daring—a chip of the old block, worthy of the name Marcel.
"Bien! M'sieu Gillies, when do we start?"
"To-day, after dinner!"
Returning to the Mission elated, Marcel ate his dinner, made up his pack while they wished him "Bon-voyage!" then went out to the stockade.
At the gate he was met simultaneously by the impact of a shaggy body and the swift licks of an eager tongue. Then Fleur circled him at full speed, yelping her delight, while she worked off the excitement of seeing her playmate again, until, at length, she trotted up and nosed his hand, keen for the daily rubbing of her ears which drew from her deep throat grateful mutterings of content.
"I leave my petite chienne for a few days," he whispered into a hairy ear. "She will be a good dog and obey Ma'm'selle Julie, who will feed her?"
The puppy broke away and ran to the gate, turning to him with pricked ears as she whined for the daily stroll into the scrub after snow-shoe rabbits.
"Non, ma petite! We walk not to-day!" He stroked the slate-gray back which trembled with her desire for a run with the master, then circling her shaggy neck with his arms, his face against hers, while she fretted as though she knew Jean was leaving her, said: "A'voir, Fleur!" and closed the gate.
She stood grieving, her black nose thrust between the slab pickets, the slant eyes following Marcel's back until he disappeared. Then she raised her head and, in the manner of her kind, voiced her disappointment in a long howl. And the wail of his puppy struck with strange insistence upon the ears of Jean Marcel—like a premonition of misfortune which the future held for him and which he often recalled in the weeks to come.
As the canoe of the Company journeyed through the Strait of the Spirit, flocks of gray geese, which were now leading their broods out to the coast islands from the muskegs of the interior, rose ahead, to sail away in their geometric formations, while clouds of pin-tail and black duck patrolled the low beaches.
Jean left his cargo for the Huskies in a stone cache and running into a south-wester, while homeward bound, did not reach Whale River for a fortnight. As he approached the post, he made out at the log landing the Company steamerInenew, loaded with trade goods from the depot at Charlton Island. Through the clearing, now almost bare of tepees, for the trade was over, he walked to the Mission. The door was opened by Julie Breton.
"Bon-jour, Ma'm'selle Breton!" and he seized the unresponsive hand of the girl.
"I am glad to see you home safely, Jean." Something in the face and voice of the girl checked him.
"What is the matter, Julie?" he asked. "Père Henri; he is not ill?"
"No, Jean. Père Henri is well, but——"
"You do not seem glad to see me again, Julie!"
"I am glad. You know that——"
"Well," he flung out, hurt at the girl's constrained manner, "I'll go and see someone who will welcome Jean Marcel with no sober face——"
"Jean!" she said as he turned away.
"What is it, Ma'm'selle Breton?" and he smiled into her troubled eyes. "Fleur has missed me, I know. She will give Jean Marcel a true welcome home."
"Jean—she is not there—they stole her!"
The face of Jean Marcel twisted with pain.
"Mon Dieu! Stole my Fleur—my puppy?"
"Yes, they took her from the stockade, twonights ago—two men who came up the coast after dogs."
With face buried in his arms to hide the tears misting his eyes, he leaned against the door jamb, while the girl rested a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.
"Poor Jean!"
"I worked so hard to get her. I loved that puppy, Julie; she was my child," he groaned.
"I know, Jean, how you feel; after what you have been through—to have lost her——"
"But I have not lost her!" the boy exclaimed fiercely, drawing a deep breath and facing the girl with features set like stone. "I have not lost her, Julie Breton! I will follow them and bring back my dog if I have to trail those men to Rupert House."
The tears had gone and in the eyes of Jean Marcel was a glint she had never known—a glitter of hate for the men who had taken his dog, so intense, so bitter, that she thrilled inwardly as she gazed at his transformed face. Instinctively, Julie Breton knew that the lad who faced her was no longer the playmate of old to be treated as a boy, but the possessor of a high courage and unbreakable will that men in the future would reckon with.
Jean entered the trade-house to find Gillies in conversation with a tall stranger, who, Jules whispered, was Mr. Wallace, the new inspector of the East Coast posts, who had come with the steamer.
"A few days after you left, Jean," explained Gillies, "two half-breeds dropped in here with the story that they had travelled up the coast from Rupert House to buy dogs from the Huskies. There were no dogs for sale here, and they seemed pretty sore at missing the York-boat bound south with the dogs bought by the Company for East Main and Fort George. Why, we didn't know, for they couldn't get any of those dogs. They were a weazel-faced, mean-looking pair and when Jules found them feeding two of our huskies one day, there was trouble."
"What did they do to you, Jules?" asked Jean, smiling faintly at the big Company bowman.
"What did Jules do to them, you mean," broke in Angus McCain.
"Well," continued Gillies, "we got outside in time to see Jules break his paddle over the head of one and pile into the other who had a knife out and looked mean.
"Then I kicked them out of the post. They left that night with your dog, for the next day at Little Bear Island they passed a canoe of goose-hunters bound for Whale River and the Indians noticed the puppy who seemed to be muzzled and tied."
During the recital, Marcel walked the floor of the trade-house, his blood hot with rage.
"French half-breeds, M'sieu Gillies, or Scotch?" he asked.
"Scotch, Jean, medium sized; one had lost half an ear and the other had a scar on his chin and the first finger gone on his right hand. But you're not going after them, lad; they've two days' start on you and it's August!"
"M'sieu Gillies, I took delongue traversefor dat dog. She was de best pup in dees place. I love dat husky, M'sieu. I start to-night."
The import and finality of Jean's words startled his hearers.
"Why, you won't make your trapping-grounds before the freeze-up, if you head down the coast now. You're crazy, man! Besides, they are two days ahead of you, to start with, and with two paddles will keep gaining," objected the factor.
"M'sieu Gillies," the boy ignored the factor's protest, "will you geeve me letter of credit for de Company posts?"
"Why, yes, Jean, you've got three hundred dollars credit here, but, man, stop and think! You can't overhaul those breeds alone, and if they belong in the East Main or Rupert River country they'll be back in the bush by the time you reach the posts, even if you can trail them that far. It'sthree hundred and fifty miles to Rupert House; you might be a month on the way."
Jean Marcel shook his head doggedly, determination written in the stone-hard muscles of his dark face. Then he suddenly demanded of the factor:
"What would my father, André Marcel, do eef he leeved? Because of de freeze-up would he geeve hees pup to dose dog-stealer? I ask you dat, M'sieu?"
Gillies' honest eyes frankly met the questioner's.
"André Marcel was the best canoeman on this coast, and no man ever did him a wrong who didn't pay." The factor hesitated.
"Well, M'sieu!" demanded Jean.
"André Marcel," Gillies continued, "would have followed the men who stole his dog down this coast and west to the Barren Grounds."
Jules Duroc nodded gravely as he added: "By Gar! André Marcel, he would trail dose men into de muskegs of Hell."
"Well," said Jean, smiling proudly at the encomiums of his father's prowess, "Jean Marcel, hees son, will start to-night."
Argument was futile to dissuade Marcel from his mad venture. His partners of the previous winter who had waited impatiently for his return refused to delay longer their start for Ghost River and left at once.
Then Jules took Marcel aside and quietly talked to him as would a brother.
"Jean, you stay here wid Ma'm'selle Julie till de steamer go. Dat M'sieu Wallace, he sweet on you' girl w'en you were up de coast. You stay till he leeve."
For this Jean had an outward shrug of contempt, but the rumored attentions of Wallace to Julie Breton, during his absence, sickened his heart with fear. Was he to lose her, too, as well as Fleur?
Before supper, at the Mission, Père Breton urged him to return to his trapping grounds and spare himself the toil of a hopeless quest down the coast in the face of the coming winter. Julie was adding her objections to her brother's, when a knock on the door checked her. Her face colored slightly as Jean glanced up, when she turned to the door.
"Bon soir, Monsieur!" she greeted the newcomer, a note of embarrassment in her voice.
"Good evening, Mademoiselle. I hope I'm not late?" And Inspector Wallace entered the room.
The Inspector, a handsome, well-built man of thirty-five, was dressed in the garb of civilization and wore shoes, a rarity at Whale River. Chief of the East Coast posts of the Great Company, he had been sent the year previous, from western Ontario, and put in command of men older in years and experience who had passed their lives in the far north.And naturally much resentment had manifested itself among the traders. But that the new chief officer looked and acted like a man of ability, the disgruntled factors had been forced to admit.
As Wallace sat conversing of the great world outside with Père Breton, who was evidently much pleased by his attentions to Julie, he seemed to Jean Marcel to embody all that the young Frenchman lacked. How, indeed, he asked himself, could he now aspire to the love of Julie Breton when so great a man chose to smile upon her?
Wallace seemed surprised at the presence of a humble Company hunter as a member of the priest's family, but Père Breton privately informed him that Jean was as a son and brother at the Mission.
While the black eyes of Julie flashed in response to the admiring glances of Wallace, Jean Marcel ate in silence his last meal at Whale River for many a long week, torn by his longing for the dog carried down the coast in the canoe of the thieves and by the hopelessness of his love for this girl who was manifestly thrilling to the compliments of a man who knew the world of men and cities, who had seen many women, yet found this rose of the north fair. But as he ate in silence, the young Frenchman made a vow that should this man, who was taking her from him, treat her innocence lightly, Inspectorthough he was, he should feel the cold steel of the knife of Jean Marcel.
After the meal, as Jean prepared to leave, Père Breton renewed his protests against the trip, but in vain. If he had luck, Marcel insisted, he could beat the "freeze-up" home; if not, he would travel up the coast, later, on the ice, or—well, it did not much matter what became of Jean Marcel.
So, with the letter of the factor, on which he could draw supplies at the southern posts, Jean Marcel shook the hands of his friends and, sliding his canoe into the ebb tide, started south as the dying sun gilded the flat Bay to the west. He waved his hand in farewell to the group of Company men on the shore, when he saw above them the figures of Julie Breton and the priest. As Julie held aloft something white, she and her brother were joined by a man. It was Inspector Wallace. Jean swung his paddle to and fro, in response to Julie's Godspeed, then dropping to his knees, drove the craft swiftly down-stream on the long pursuit which might take him four hundred miles down the coast to the white-waters of the great Rupert and beyond, he knew not where. And with him he carried the thought that Julie, his Julie, would daily, for a week, see this great man of the Company. It was a heavy heart that Marcel that night took down to the sea.
With the vision of Fleur, strangely sensing the impending separation from her master, as her wail of despair rose from the stockade the night he left her to go north, constantly before his eyes, Jean Marcel reached the coast and turned south. The thought of his puppy muzzled and bound in the canoe two days ahead of him lent power to every lunge of his paddle. While the knowledge that, back at Whale River, instead of walking the river shore in the long twilight with Jean Marcel, as he had dreamed, Julie would have Wallace at her side, added to the viciousness of his stroke. The sea was flat and when at daylight he saw looming ahead the shores of Big Island, he knew he had won a deserved rest, so went ashore, cooked some food and slept.
A day's hard paddle past Big Island the dreaded Cape of the Four Winds thrust its bold buttresses far out into the sea toward the White Bear, and Marcel knew that wind here meant days of delay, for no canoe could round this grim headland feared by allvoyageurs, except in fair weather. So, after a few hours' sleep, he toiled all day down the coast and at midnight had put the gray cape behind him.
Two days later when Marcel went ashore on the Isle of Graves of the Esquimos, to boil his kettle, he found, to his delight, a Fort George goose-boat on the same errand. The Crees who had just left the post to shoot the winter's supply of gray and snowy geese, or "wavies," as they are called from their resemblance in flight to a white banner waving in the sun, had met, two nights before off the mouth of Big River, the canoe he was following. The dog-thieves, who were strangers, did not stop at the post, but had continued south.
With two paddles they were not holding their lead, he laughed to himself, but were coming back.If he hurried he would overhaul them before they reached Rupert. He did not know the Rupert River, and if once they started inland he would be caught by the "freeze-up" in a strange country, so he continued on late into the night.
Then followed day after day of endless toil at the paddle, for he knew he must travel while the weather held. He could not hope to make Rupert, or even East Main before the wind changed; which might mean idling for days on a beach pounded by seas in which no canoe could live. At times, with a stern breeze, he rigged a piece of canvas to a spruce pole and sailed. But one thought dominated him as mile after mile of the gray East Coast slid past; the thought of having his puppy once more in his canoe, fretting at the gulls and ducks and geese, as he headed north.
Only through necessity did he stop to shoot geese, whose gray and white legions were gathering on the coast for the annual migration. At dawn the "gou-luk!" of the gray ganders marshalling their families out to the feeding grounds, which once sent his blood leaping, now left him cold. He was hunting bigger game, and his heart hungered for his puppy, beaten and half-starved, in all likelihood, travelling somewhere ahead down that bleak coast in the canoe of two men who did not know that close on their heels followed an enemy as dogged, as relentless, as a wolf on the trail of an old caribou abandoned by the herd.
And so, after days of ceaseless dip and swing, dip and swing, which at night left his back and arms stiff and his fingers numb, Jean Marcel turned into the mouth of the East Main River and paddled up to the post, where he learned that the canoe of the half-breeds had not been seen, and that no hunters of their description traded there. So he turned again to the Bay and headed south for Rupert House. Off the Wild Geese Islands he met what he had for days been dreading, the first September north-wester, and was driven ashore. For the following three days he rested and hunted geese, and when the storm whipped itself out, went on, and at last, crossing Boatswain's Bay, rounded Mount Sherrick and paddled up Rupert Bay to the famous old post, which, since the days of the Merry Monarch and his favorite, Prince Rupert, the first Governor of the "Company of Merchants-Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay," has guarded the river mouth—an uninterrupted history of two centuries and a half of fair dealing with the red fur-hunters of Rupert Land.
"So you're the son of André Marcel? Well, well! Time does fly! Why, André and I made many a camp together in the old days. There was a man, my lad!"
Jean straightened his wide shoulders in pride at this praise of his father by Alec Cameron, factor at Rupert. When he had explained the object of his long journey south in the fall, the latter raised his bushy eyebrows in amazement.
"You mean to tell me that you paddled from Whale River in fifteen days, after a dog?"
"Oui, M'sieu Cameron."
"Well, you didn't waste the daylight or the moon either. You're sure a son of André Marcel. It must be a record for a single paddle; and all for a pup, eh?"
"Oui, all for a pup!"
"You deserve to get that dog. Now, these half-breeds you describe dropped in here in June behind the Mistassini brigade, and traded their fur. Then they started north after dogs."
"Dey were onlee a day ahead of me up de coast."
"Queer I haven't seen 'em here yet. Pierre!" Cameron called to a Company man passing the trade-house. "Have those two Mistassini strangers who went north in June, got back yet?"
"No, but Albert meet dem in Gull Bay two day back. Dey have one pup dey trade from Huskee!"
"There you are, Marcel! Your men crossed over to Hannah Bay to hunt geese. They'll be here in a week or two on their way up-river. You wait here and we'll get your dog when they show up."
"T'anks, M'sieu Cameron!" The dark eyes of Jean Marcel snapped. At last he was closing in on his quarry. "I weel go to Hannah Bay now and get my dog."
"Two to one, lad! They may get the best of you, and I've no men to spare; they're all away goose hunting. You'd better wait here."
"M'sieu, André Marcel would go alone and tak' his dog. I, hees son, also weel tak' mine."
"Good Lord! André Marcel would have skinned them alive—those two. Well, good luck, Jean! but I don't like your tackling those breeds alone."
Jean shook hands with the factor.
"Bon-jour, M'sieu Cameron, and t'anks!"
"If you don't drop in here on your way back, give my regards to Gillies and his family, and be careful," said the factor as Marcel left him.
Two days later, after rounding Point Comfort, Marcel was crossing the mud-flats of Gull Bay. At last the stalk was on, for somewhere in the vast marshes of the Hannah Bay coast, camped the men he had followed four hundred miles to meet face to face and fight for his dog. Somewhere ahead, through the gray mist, back in the juniper and alder scrub beyond the wide reaches of tide-flats and goose-grass, was Fleur, a prisoner.
That night in camp at East Point, while he cleaned the action and bore of his rifle, the clatter of the geese in the muskeg behind the far lines of spruce edging the marshes, filled him with wonder. Never on the bold East Coast had he heard such a din of geese gathering for the long flight. At dawn, for it was windy, lines of gray Canadas passing overhead bound out to the shoals, waked him with their clamor. The tide was low, and he carried his canoe across the mud-flats through flocks of plover, snipe and yellow-legs, feeding behind the ebb, while teal and black-duck swarmed along the beaches.
As he poled his canoe south through the shoals, he recalled the tales his father had told him of the marshes of Hannah Bay, the greatest breeding ground of the gray goose and black duck in all the wide north. Everywhere along the bars and sand-spits the gray Canadas were idling, always with an erect, keen-eyed sentinel on guard. Farther out, white islands of snowy geese flashed in the sun, as here and there a "wavy" rose on the water to flap his black-tipped wings. Just in from their Arctic breeding-grounds, they were lingering for a month's feast on toothsome south-coast goose-grass before seeking their winter home on the great Gulf two thousand miles away.
Slowly throughout the morning Marcel travelled along the mud-flats bared for miles by the retreating tide. At times the breeze carried to his ears the faint sound of firing, but there were goose-boats from Moose and Rupert House on the coast, and it meant little. That night as the tide covered the marshes he ran up a channel of the Harricanaw delta seeking a camp-ground on its higher shores.
Landing he was looking for drift-wood for his fire when suddenly he stopped.
"Ah! You have been here, my friends."
In the soft mud of the shore ran the clearly marked tracks of a man and dog. The footprints of the dog seemed large for Fleur, but Marcel hadnot seen her in six weeks and the puppy was growing fast.
"Fleur!" he said aloud, "will you remember Jean Marcel after all these weeks with them?"
He had seen no smoke of a fire and the tracks were at least two days old. His men were doubtless on the west shore of the bay where the water for miles inland to the spruce networked the marshes, and the rank grass grew to the height of a man's head; but he would find them. The guns of the hunters would betray their whereabouts.
He drew a long breath of relief. At last he had reached the end of the trail. He could now come to grips with his enemies. To the thief, the law of the north is ruthless, and ruthlessly Jean Marcel was prepared to exact, if need be, the last drop of the blood of these men in payment for this act. It was now his nerve and wit against theirs, with Fleur as the stake. The blood of André Marcel and thecoureurs-de-bois, which stirred in his veins, was hot for the fight which the days would bring.
Before dawn Jean was taking advantage of the high tide, and when the first light streaked the east, was well on his way. As the sun lifted over the muskeg behind the bay he saw, hanging in the still air, the smoke of a fire.
Quickly turning inshore, he ran his canoe up a waterway and into the long grass. There he waiteduntil the tide went out, listening to the faint reports of the guns of the hunters. At noon, having eaten some cold goose and bannock, he took his rifle and started back over the marsh. Slowly he worked his way, keeping to the cover of the grass and alders, circling around the wide, open spaces, pock-marked with water-holes and small ponds.
Knowing that the breeds would not take the dog with them to their blinds but would tie her up, he planned to stalk the camp up-wind, in order not to alarm Fleur, who might betray his presence to his enemies if by accident they were in camp, in the afternoon, when the geese were moving. After that—well, he should see.
At last he lay within sight of the tent, which was pitched on a tongue of high ground running out into the rush-covered mud-flats. The camp was deserted. His eyes strained wistfully for the sight of the shaggy shape of his puppy. Pain stabbed at his heart. She was not there. What could it mean? Distant shots from the marsh to the west marked the absence of at least one of the breeds. But where was Fleur?
Marcel was too "bush-wise" to take any chances. Still keeping to cover, he made his approach up-wind until he lay within a stone's throw of the tent, when a shift in the breeze warned a pair of keen nostrils that some living thing skulked not far off.
The heart of Jean Marcel leaped as the howl of Fleur betrayed his presence, for huskies never bark. Grasping his rifle, he waited. The uproar of the dog brought no response. The breeds were both away. Rising, he ran to the excited puppy lashed to a stake back of the tent.
"Fleur!Ma petite chienne!" Dropping his rifle, he approached his dog with outstretched arms. With flattened ears, the puppy crouched, growling at the stranger, her mane bristling.
"Fleur! Don't you know me, pup?" continued Marcel in soothing tones, holding out his hand.
The puppy's ears went forward. She sniffed long at the hand that had once caressed her. Slowly the growl died in her throat.
"Fleur! Fleur! My poor puppy! Don't you remember Jean Marcel?"
Again the puzzled dog drew deep whiffs through her black nostrils. Back in her brain memory was at work. Slowly the soothing tones of the voice of Marcel stirred the ghosts of other days; vague hints, blurred by the cruelty of weeks, of a time when the hand of a master caressed her and did not strike, when a voice called to her as this voice—then another sniff, and she knew. With a whimper her warm tongue licked his hand, and Jean Marcel had his puppy in his arms. Mad with joy, the yelping husky strained at her rawhide bonds as heranxious master examined a great lump on her head, and her ribs, ridged with welts from kick and blow.
"So they tied her up and beat her, my Fleur? Well, she not leave Jean Marcel again. Were he go, Fleur go!"
Suddenly in his ears were hissed the words:
"W'at you do wid dat dog?" And a fierce blow on the back of the head hurled the kneeling Marcel flat on his face.
For a space he lay stunned, his numbed senses blurred beyond thought or action. Then, as his dazed brain cleared, the realization that life hung on his presence of mind, for he would receive no mercy from the thieves, held him limp on the ground as though unconscious.
Snarling curses at the crumpled body of his victim, the half-breed was busy with the joining of some rawhide thongs. Then Jean's dizziness faded. Cautiously he raised an eyelid. The breed was bending over him with a looped thong. Not a muscle moved as the Frenchman waited. Nearer leaned the thief. He reached to slip the looped rawhide over one of Marcel's outstretched hands, when, with a lunge from the ground, the arms of the latter clamped on his legs like a sprung trap. With a wrench, the surprised thief was thrown heavily.
Cat-like, the hunter was on his man, bearing himdown. And then began a battle in which quarter was neither asked nor given. Heavier but slower than the younger man, the thief vainly sought to reach Marcel's throat, for the Frenchman's arms, having the under grip, blocked the half-breed from Jean's knife and his own. Over and over they rolled, locked together; so evenly matched in strength that neither could free a hand. Near them yelped Fleur, frantic with excitement, plunging at her stake.
Then the close report of a gun sounded in Marcel's startled ears. A great fear swept him. The absent thief was working back to camp. It was a matter of minutes. Was it to this that he had toiled down the coast in search of his dog—a grave in the Harricanaw mud? And the face of Julie Breton flashed across his vision.
Desperate with the knowledge that he must win quickly, if at all, he strained until the fingers of his left hand reached the haft of the breed's knife. But a twinge shot through his shoulder like the stab of steel, as the teeth of his enemy crunched into his flesh, and he lost his grip. Maddened by pain, Marcel wrenched his right arm free and had his own knife before the fingers of the thief closed on his wrist, holding the blade in the sheath. Then began a duel of sheer strength. For a time the straining arms lifted and pushed, at a dead lock. With veinsswelling on neck and forehead, Marcel fought to unsheath his knife; but the half-breed's arm was iron, did not give. Again a gun was fired—still nearer the camp.
With help at hand, the thief, safe so long as he held his grip, snarled in triumph in the ear of his trapped enemy. But his peril only increased the Frenchman's strength. The fighting blood of the Marcels boiled in his veins. With a fierce heave of the shoulders the hand gripping the knife moved upward. The arm of the thief gave way, only to straighten. Then with a wrench that would not be denied, Jean tore the blade from the sheath.
Frantically now, the breed, white with sudden fear, fought the sinewy wrist, advancing inexorably, on its grim mission. In short jerks, Marcel hunched the knife toward its goal. As he weakened, the knotted features of the one who felt death creeping to him, inch by inch, went gray. The hand fighting Marcel's wrist dripped with sweat. Panting hoarsely, like a beast at bay, the thief twisted and writhed from the pitiless steel. Then in his ears rang the voice of the approaching hunter.
With a cry of despair, the doomed half-breed called to the man who had come too late. Already the knuckles of Marcel were high on his ribs. With a final wrench, the blade was lunged home.
The cry was smothered in a cough. The man who had beaten his last puppy gasped, quivered convulsively; then lay still.
Bathed in sweat, shaking from the strain and exertion of the long battle, Marcel got stiffly to his feet and seized his rifle. Again the camp was hailed from the marsh. It was evident that the goose-hunter had not sensed the cry of his partner or he would not have betrayed his position. Doubtless he was poling up a reed-masked waterway with a load of geese.
Jean smiled grimly, for the thief would have only his shotgun loaded with fine shot, for large shot is not used for geese in the north. Hurriedly searching the tent, he found a rifle which he threw into the rushes; then loosed Fleur.
The half-breed was in his power, but he wanted no prisoner. To stay and beat this man as Fleur had been beaten would have been sweet, but of blood he had had enough. For an instant his eyes rested on the ghastly evidence of his visit, awaiting the return of the hunter; then he took Fleur and started across the marsh for his canoe.
To the dead man, who, to the theft of Fleur would have lightly added the death of her master, Marcel gave no thought. As for the other, when he found his dead partner, fear of an ambush would prevent him from following their trail.
Reaching his canoe, Jean divided a goose with Fleur and, when it became dark, started for East Point. That the half-breed's partner might attempt to follow him and seek revenge, he had no doubt, but with the shotgun alone, for Jean had taken the only rifle at their camp, the thief's sole chance would be to stalk Marcel while he slept. However, as the sea was flat and the tide ebbing, Marcel was confident that daylight would find him well up the coast toward Point Comfort.