March, the Crees' "Moon of the Crust on the Snow," was old. Camped on a chain of lakes in the Salmon country Marcel had been following the few traps for which he had bait and at the same time hunting widely for food. Soon, the sun, mounting higher and higher each day at noon, would begin to soften the surface of the snow which the freezing nights would harden into crust. Then he could travel far and fast. With much searching he had found another beaver lodge, postponing for a space the days when man and dog would have not even half rations to stay their hunger. The Frenchman's drawn face and loose capote evidenced the weeks of under-nourishment; but, though Fleur's great bones and the ropes of muscle, banding her back and shoulders, thrust through her shaggy coat with undue prominence, still she had as yet suffered little from the famine. So long as Jean Marcel had had fish or meat, his growing puppy had received the greater share, for she had already attained in that winter on the Ghost a height and bulk of bone equal to that of her slate-gray mother now far on the north coast.
For days Jean had been praying for the coming of the crust. With it he planned to make a wide circle back into the high barrens in search of returning caribou. Once the crust had set hard, travelling with the sled into new country would be easy. Food he must accumulate to take them through the April thaws, or perish miserably, with no one to carry the news of their fate to Whale River. Since the heart-breaking days when the white wolves drove the caribou south and the rabbits disappeared, he had, in moments of depression, sat by the fire at night, wondering, when June again came to Whale River and one by one the canoes of the Crees appeared, if, by chance, a pair of dark eyes would ever turn to the broad surface of the river for the missing craft of Jean Marcel—whether in the joy of her love for another the heart of the girl would sadden for one whose bones whitened in far Ungava hills.
At last the crust came. With eyes shielded by snow goggles made by cutting slits in flat pieces of spruce, for the glare of the sun on the barrens was intense, Jean started with his dog. All the food he had was on his sled. He had burned his bridges, for if he failed in his hunt, they would starve, but as well starve in the barrens, he thought, as back at camp.
They were passing through the thick spruce of asheltered valley, travelling up-wind, when Fleur, sniffing hard, grew excited. There was something ahead, probably fur, so he did not tie his dog. Shortly Fleur started to bolt with the sled and Jean turned her loose. Following his yelping husky, who broke through the new crust at every leap, Marcel entered a patch of cedar scrub. There Fleur distanced him.
Shortly, a scream, followed by a din of snarls and squalls filled the forest. Close ahead a bitter struggle of creatures milling to the death was on. "Tiens!" exclaimed Jean, fearing for the eyes of his raw puppy, battling for the first time with the great cat of the north. He broke through the scrub to see the lynx spring backward from the rush of the dog and leap for the limbs of a low cedar. But the cat was too slow, for at the same instant, Fleur's jaws snapped on his loins, and with a wrench of her powerful neck, the husky threw the animal to the snow with a broken back. In a flash she changed her grip, the long fangs crunching through the neck of the helpless beast, and with a quiver, the lynx was dead.
Hot with the lust of battle, Fleur worried the body of her enemy. Reaching her, Jean proudly patted his dog's back.
"My Fleur! She make deloup-cervierrun!" hecried, delighted with the courage and power of his puppy.
Then he anxiously examined the slashes of rapier claws on Fleur's muzzle and shoulders.
"Bon!" he said, relieved. "De lynx he very weak or he cut you deeper dan dese scratch."
As Jean hastily skinned the dead cat he marvelled at its emaciation.
"Ah! He also miss de rabbit. Lucky he starve or you get de beeg scratch, Fleur."
For answer the hot tongue of the dog sought his hands as she raised her brown eyes to his. With arms around her shaggy shoulders her proud master muttered into the ears of the delighted husky love words that would have been strange indeed to any but Fleur, who found them sweet beyond measure.
"My Fleur, she grow to be de dog, de mostsauvage!" he cried. "Some day she keel de wolf, eh?"
Owing to the weakened condition of the lynx, Fleur's were but surface scratches. So furious had been the husky's assault on the starved cat that she had left no opening to the knife-like claws of the powerful hind legs.
Continuing east, four days later Marcel camped in a valley on the flank of a great barren. In the morning, tying Fleur with a rawhide thong whichshe could have chewed through with ease but had been taught to respect, he followed the scrub along the edge of the barren searching for caribou signs. Often he stopped to gaze out across the white waste reaching away east to the horizon, seeking for blue-gray objects whose movements in scraping away the snow to the moss beneath, would alone mark them as caribou. In places the great winds had swept the plateau almost bare, beating down the snow to a depth of less than a foot. All day he skirted the barren but at last turned back to his camp sick at heart and spent with the long day on the crust, following his meagre breakfast. Deep in the shelter of the thick timber of the valley, he had dug away the snow for his fire and sleeping place, lashing above his bed of spruce boughs a strip of canvas which acted both as windbreak and heat reflector. When they had eaten their slim supper, he freshened the fire with birch logs, and sat down with Fleur's head between his knees. The "Starving Moon" of the Montagnais hung over Jean Marcel.
"Fleur, you know we got onlee two day meat left? W'en dat go, Jean Marcel go too—een few day, a week maybe; and Fleur, w'at she do?"
The husky's slant eyes shone with her dog love into the set face of her master. She whined, wrinkling her gray nose, then her jaw dropped,which was her manner of laughing, while her hot breath steamed in the freezing air. Vainly she waited for the smile that had never failed to light Marcel's face in the old days at such advances.
Dropping his mittens Jean held the massive head between his naked hands.
"Jean Marcel feel ver' bad to leave Fleur alone. Wid no game she starve too, w'en he go," he said.
Fleur's deep throat rumbled in ecstasy as the hands of the master rubbed her ears.
"Back on de Ghost, Fleur, ees some feesh and meat Joe and Antoine left; not much, but eet tak' us to Whale Riviere, maybe."
The lips of Fleur lifted from her white teeth at the names of Jean's partners.
"You remember Joe Piquet, Fleur? Joe Piquet!"
The husky growled. She knew only too well the name, Joe Piquet.
"Eet ees four—five sleep to de Ghost, Fleur, shall we go? W'at you t'ink?"
The strained face in the fur-lined hood approached the dog's, whose eyes shifted uneasily from the fixed look of her master.
"We go back to de Ghost, Fleur, or mak' one beeg hunt for de deer?"
The perplexed husky, unable to meet Marcel's piercing eyes, sprang to her feet with a yelp.
"Bon!" he cried. "We mak' de beeg hunt!" He had had his answer and on the yelp of his dog had staked their fate. To-morrow he would push on into the barrens and find the caribou drifting north again, or flicker out with his dog as men for centuries had perished, beaten by the long snows.
In the morning he divided his remaining food into four parts; a breakfast and a supper for himself and Fleur, for two days. After that—strips of caribou hide and moss, boiled in snow water, to ease the throbbing ache of their stomachs.
Eating his thin stew, he shortened his belt still another hole over his lean waist, and harnessing Fleur, turned resolutely east into country no white man had ever seen, on his bold gamble for food or an endless sleep in the blue Ungava hills.
In his weakened state, black spots and pin-points of light danced before his eyes. Distant objects were often magnified out of all proportion. So intense was the glare of the high March sun on the crust that his wooden goggles alone saved him from snow-blindness. He travelled a few miles until dizziness forced him to rest. Later he continued on, to rest again, while the black nose of Fleur, who was still comparatively strong, sought his face, as she wondered at the reason for the master's strange actions.
By noon he had crossed no trail except that of awolverine seeking food like himself, and finally went down into the timbered valley of a brook where he left Fleur and the sled. Then he started again on his hopeless search. As the streams flowed northeast, he was certain that he had crossed the Height of Land to the Ungava Bay watershed, and was now in the headwater country of the fabled River of Leaves, the Koksoak of the Esquimos, into which no hunter from Whale River had ever penetrated.
Marcel was snow-shoeing through the scrub at the edge of the plateau when far out on the barren he saw two spots. Shortly he was convinced that the objects moved.
"By Gar, deer! At last they travel nord!" he gasped, gazing with bounding pulses at the distant spots almost indistinguishable against the snow. Meat out there on the barren awaited him—food and life, if only he could get within range.
Cutting back into the scrub, that he might begin his stalk of the caribou from the nearest cover with the wind in his face, he moved behind a rise in the ground slowly out into the barren. With a caution he had never before exercised, lest the precious food now almost within reach should escape him, the starving man advanced.
At last he crawled up behind a low knoll, and stretched out on the snow. Cocking and thrustinghis rifle before him, he wormed his way to the top of the rise and looked.
There a hundred yards off, playing on the crust, were two arctic foxes. Distorting their size, the barren ground mirage had cruelly deceived him.
With a groan the spent hunter dropped his head on his arms. "All dees for fox!" he murmured. Then, because foxes were meat, he took careful aim and shot one, wounding the other, which he killed with the second bullet. Hanging the carcasses in a spruce, Marcel continued to skirt the barren toward the east.
As dusk fell he returned to Fleur and made camp. Cutting up and boiling one of the foxes, he and the dog ate ravenously of the rank flesh, but hope was low in the breast of Jean Marcel. A day or two more of half rations and he was done. The spring migration of the caribou was not yet on. And when the deer did come, it would be too late. Jean Marcel would be past aid and Fleur—what would become of her? True, she could live on the flanks of the caribou herds like the wolves, but the wolves would find and destroy her.
Tortured by such thoughts, he sat by his fire, the husky's great head on his knee, her eyes searching his, mutely demanding the reason for his strange silence.
Another day of fruitless wandering in which hehad pushed as far east as his fading strength would take him, and Jean shared the last of the food with his dog. He had fought hard to find the deer, had already travelled one hundred miles into the barrens, but he felt that it was no use; he was beaten. The spirit of the coureurs whose blood coursed his veins would drive him on and on, but without food the days of his hunting would be few. Henceforth it would be caribou hide boiled with moss from the barrens to ease the pinch of his hunger, but his strength would swiftly go. Then, when hope died, rather than leave his dog to the wolves, he would shoot Fleur and lying down beside her in his blanket, place the muzzle of his rifle against his own head.
Two days, in which Marcel and Fleur drank the liquor from stewed caribou hide and moss while he continued to hunt, followed. As he staggered into camp at the end of the second day the man was so weak that he scarcely found strength to gather wood for his fire. Fleur now showed signs of slow starvation in her protruding ribs and shoulders. Her heavy coat no longer shone with gloss but lay flat and lusterless. Vainly she whimpered for the food that her heart-sick master could not give her. With the dog beside him, Marcel lay by the fire numbed into indifference to his fate. The torment of hunger had vanished leaving only great weaknessand a dazed brain. He thought of the three wooden crosses at Whale River; how restful it would be to lie beside them behind the Mission, instead of sleeping far in the barrens where the great winds beat ceaselessly by over the treeless snows. There Julie Breton might have planted forest flowers on the mound that marked the grave of Jean Marcel. But no, he had forgotten; Julie Breton would not be at Whale River. Julie would live at East Main and some day at her feet would play the children of Wallace. Julie would be married in the spring at Whale River, while the wolves and ravens were scattering the whitened bones of Jean Marcel over the valley, and there would be no rest—no rest.
What hopes he had had of a little house of their own at Whale River when he entered the service of the Company and drove the mail packet down the coast, with the team that Fleur would give him. How often he had pictured that home where Julie and the children would wait his return from summer voyage and winter trail; Julie Breton, whom he had loved from boyhood and whom, he had once prided himself, should love him, some day, when he had proved his manhood among the swart men of the East Coast.
All a dream—a dream. Julie was happy. She would soon marry the great man at East Main, while in a few days Jean Marcel was going to snuffout—smoulder a while, as a fire from lack of wood, dying by inches—by inches; and then two shots.
Poor Fleur! It had all come to pass because he had dared to follow and bring her home—had had no time to cache fish and game in the fall. She would have been better off with the half-breeds on the Rupert, where the caribou had gone. They would have kicked her, but fed her too. Yes, she would have been better there. Now he would take her with him, his own dog, when the time came. No more starvation for her, and a death in the barrens when she met the white wolves. Yes, he would take her with him.
So rambled the thoughts of Jean Marcel, as he lay with his dog facing the creeping death his rifle would cheat, until kindly sleep brought him surcease—sleep, followed by dreams of the wide barrens trampled by herds of the returning caribou, of juicy steaks sizzling over the fire, while Fleur gnawed contentedly at huge thigh bones.
Before dawn, a cold nose nuzzling his face buried in his robe, waked Marcel.
"Fleur, hungry? Eet ees better to sleep w'en dere ees no breakfast," he protested.
The warm tongue sought the face of the drowsy man, and the dog, not to be put off, thrust her nose roughly into his robe, whimpering as she pulled at his capote.
"Poor Fleur!" he muttered. "No more meat for de pup! Lie down! Jean ees ver' tired."
But the dog, bent on arousing the master, grew only the more insistent. Seizing an arm in her jaws, she dragged Marcel from his rabbit-skin blankets.
As he sat upright, wide awake, Fleur sniffed long at the frosty air, then dashed yelping into the dusk up the trail toward the barren. Turning, she ran back to camp, whining excitedly.
"Tiens! W'at you smell, Fleur?" cried Marcel tearing his rifle with shaking hands from its skin case and cramming cartridges into a pocket. Could it be, he wondered, could it be the deer at last?No, only a starving wolf or lynx, prowling near the camp, likely. But still he would go! The love of life was yet strong in Jean Marcel now that a gleam of hope warmed his heart.
Slipping his toes into the thongs of his snow-shoes, he made Fleur fast to a tree, and started. He was so weak from lack of food that often he was forced to stop in the climb, shaken by his hammering heart. At last, exhausted, he dragged himself to the shoulder of the barren and on unsteady legs moved along the edge of the scrub, his eyes straining to pierce the wall of dusk which shut the plateau from his sight. But the shadows still blanketed the barren; so testing the light wind, that he might move directly out toward the game when the light grew stronger, he sat down to save his strength for the stalk. Only too clearly, his weakness warned him that it was his last hunt. By another day, even though he managed the climb, his trembling hands would prevent the lining of his sights on game.
As opal and rose faintly streaked the east, the teeth of the hunter, waiting to read the fate daylight would disclose, chattered in the stinging air. But a space now, and he would know whether he were to creep back to his blankets and wait for stark despair to steady the hand which would bring swift release for Fleur and himself, or whether meat,food, life, were scraping with round-toed hooves the snow from the caribou moss out there in the dim dawn.
Daylight filtered over the floor of snow to meet Marcel lying at the top of a rise out on the barren, waiting. As the light at length opened up the treeless miles, a sob shook the lean frame of the hunter. Tears welled in the deep-set eyes to course down and freeze upon his face, for there, on the snow before him, were theblue-gray shapes of caribou.
Three deer were feeding almost within range while farther out, gray patches, moving on the snow, marked other bands. At last the spring migration had reached him, and barely in time. He would see Whale River again when June came north. And Fleur, fretting back there in camp at his absence, after the lean days would revel and grow gigantic on deer meat.
Painfully Marcel crawled within easy range of the nearest caribou. As he attempted to line his sights in order to hit two with the first shot, as he had often done, the waving of his gun barrel in his trembling hands swept him cold with fear. The exertion of crawling to his position had cruelly shaken his nerves. So he rested.
Then he carefully took aim. As he fired, his heart skipped a beat, for he thought he had missed. But to his joy a caribou bounded from the snow,ran a few feet and fell, while another, stopping to scent the air before circling up-wind, gave him a second shot. The deer was badly hit and the next shot brought it down.
The tension of the crisis passed, the shattered nerves relaxed, and for a space the starving hunter lay limp in the snow. But warned by his rapidly numbing fingers, he forced himself to his feet and went to the deer. Out on the barren beyond the sound of his rifle scattered bands of caribou were feeding. Meat to take them through the big "break-up" of April was at hand. The lean face of Jean Marcel twisted into a grim smile.
He had beaten the long snows.
Stopping only to take the tongues and a piece of haunch, Marcel returned to his hungry dog. Frantic with the faint scent of caribou brought by the breeze off the barren, the famished Fleur chafed and fretted for his return.
"Here, Fleur, see what Jean Marcel got for you!"
The husky, maddened by the scent of the blood-red meat, plunged at her leash, her jaws dripping with slaver. Throwing her a chunk of frozen haunch which she bolted greedily, Marcel filled his kettle with snow and putting in a tongue and strips of steak to boil, lay down by his fire.
At intervals during the day Jean drank the strengthening broth, too "bush-wise" to sicken himself by gorging. By late afternoon he was able to drive the rejuvenated Fleur to the barren and bring back the meat on the sled. The days following were busy ones. At first his weakness forced him to husband his strength while the stew and roasted red meat were thickening his blood, but as the food began to tell, he was able to hunt farther and farther into the barrens where the main migration of the caribou was passing. When he was strong enough, he took Fleur with a load of meat back to his old winter camp, returning with traps. These he set at the carcasses he had shot, for foxes, lynxes and wolverines were drawn from the four winds to his kill. So while he hunted meat to carry him through April, and home, at the same time he added materially to his fur-pack.
Toward the end of March, before the first thaws softened his back trail and made sled-travel heart-breaking for Fleur, Jean began relaying west the meat he had shot. He had now, cached in the barrens, ample food to supply Fleur and himself until the opening of the waterways when fish would be a most welcome change. His sledding over, he returned to his camp in the barrens to get his traps and take one last hunt, for the lean weeks of the winter had made him over-cautious and he wished to make the trip back with a loaded sled.
By the coming of April, Fleur, in whom an abundance of red caribou meat had swiftly worked a metamorphosis, had increased in bone and weight. As Jean watched her throw her heavy shoulders into her collar and trot lightly off over the hard trail with a two hundred pound load his heart leaped with love of the beautiful beast who worshipped him with every red drop in her shaggy body. What a team she would give him some day! he thought. There would be nothing like them south of Hudson's Straits. And the Company would need them for the winter mail packet, with Jean Marcel to drive them.
Lately he had noticed a new trait in his dog. Several times, deep in the night when he waked to renew the fire, he had found that Fleur was not sleeping near him but had wandered off into the "bush." As she needed no food, he thought these night hunts of the husky peculiar. But at dawn, he always found Fleur back in camp sleeping beside him.
It was Marcel's last night in the barren-ground camp. Leaving Fleur, he had, as usual, hunted all day, returning with a sled load of meat which he drew himself. As he approached the camp he crossed the trail of a huge timber wolf and hurried to learn if his dog had been attacked, for tied as she was, she would fight with a cruel handicap. But Fleur greeted him as usual with yelps of delight. In the vicinity of the camp there were no tracks to show that the wolf had approached the husky. However, Marcel decided that he would not leave her again bound in camp unable to chew through the rawhide thongs in time to protect herself from sudden attacks of the wolves which roamed the country.
After supper man and dog sat by the fire, but Fleur was manifestly restless. Time and again she left his side to take long sniffs of the air. Not even the rubbing of her ears which usually brought grunts of pleasure had the magic to hold her long.
The early moon hung on the white brow of a distant ridge, and Jean, finishing his pipe, was about to renew his fire and roll into his blankets, when a long, wailing howl floated across the valley.
Fleur bounded to her feet, her quivering nostrils sucking in the keen air. Again the call of the timber wolf drifted out on the silent night. Fleur, alive with excitement, trotted into the "bush." Ina moment she returned to the fire, whimpering. Then sitting down, she pointed her nose at the stars and her deep throat swelled with the long-drawn howl of the husky. Shortly, when the timber wolf replied, the lips of Fleur did not lift from her white fangs in a snarl nor did her thick mane rise as her ears pricked eagerly forward.
At dawn Jean waked with a sense of loneliness. Pushing together the embers of his fire, he put on fresh wood, and not seeing Fleur, called to her but she did not appear. She had a habit of prowling around the neighboring "bush" at dawn, inspecting fresh tracks of mice, searching for ptarmigan or for the snow-shoe rabbits that were not there. But when Marcel's breakfast was cooked Fleur was still absent. Thinking that a fresh game trail had led her some distance, he ate, then started to break camp. Finally he put his index and middle fingers between his teeth and blew the piercing whistle which had never failed to bring her leaping home. Intently, he listened for her answer somewhere in the valley of the stream or on the edge of the barren, but the yelp of his dog did not come to his straining ears.
Curious as to the cause of her absence Jean smoked his pipe and waited. He was anxious to start back with his traps and meat; but where was Fleur? Becoming alarmed by the middle of themorning, he made a wide circle of the camp hoping to pick up her trail. Two days previous there had been a flurry of snow sufficient to enable him to follow her tracks on the stiff crust. In the vicinity of the camp were traces of Fleur's recent footprints but finally, at a distance, Marcel ran into a fresh trail leading down into the brook-bottom. There he lost it, and after hours of search returned to camp to wait for her return. But the day wore away and the husky did not appear. Night came and visions of his dog lying somewhere stiff in the snow slashed and torn by wolves, tortured his thoughts. If only he could pick up her trail at daylight, he thought, for she might still live, crippled, unable to come to him, waiting for Jean Marcel who had never failed her.
As he sat brooding by his fire, he came to realize, now that he had lost her, what a part of him the dog had become. His thoughts drifted back over their life together, months of gruelling toil and—delight. Tears traced their way down the wind-burned cheeks of Marcel as he recalled her early puppy ways and antics, how she had loved to nibble with her sharp milk teeth at his moccasins and sit in the bow of the canoe, on their way down the coast, scolding at the seals and ducks; with what mad delight she had welcomed his visits to the stockade at Whale River circling him at full speed,until breathless and panting, she leaped upon him, her hot tongue seeking his hands and face. Then on the long trail home from the south coast marshes, how closely she would snuggle to his back as they lay on the beaches, as if fearing to lose him while she slept. And the winter on the Ghost, with its ghastly end—what a rock his dog had been when his partners failed him! In the moment of his peril, how savagely she had battled for Jean Marcel! Through the lean weeks of starvation when hope had died, to the dawn when she had waked him at the coming of the caribou, his thoughts led him. And now, when spring and Whale River were near, it was all over. Their life together with its promise of the future had been snapped short off. He should never again look into the slant, brown eyes of Fleur. He had lost his all; first Julie, and now, Fleur. There was nothing left.
At daybreak, without hope, he took up the search along the stream. Where the wind had driven, the crust now stiff with alternate freezing and thawing and swept clean of snow, would show little sign of the passing of the dog, but in the sheltered areas where the crust was softer and the young snow lay, he hoped to cross the tracks of Fleur. At length, miles from the camp, he picked up the trail of the dog in some light drift. Following the tracks across the brook-bottom and into the scrub of theopposite slope, he suddenly stopped, wide-eyed with amazement at the evidence written plainly in the light covering of the crust. Fleur's tracks had been joined by, and ran side by side with, the trail of a wolf.
"By Gar!" gasped the surprised Frenchman. "She do not fight wid de wolf!"
As he travelled, he found no marks of battle in the snow, simply the parallel trails of the two, dog and wolf, now trotting, now lengthening out into the long, wolf lope.
"Fleur leave Jean Marcel for de wolf!" the trapper rubbed his eyes as though suspicious of a trick of vision. His Fleur, whom he loved as his life and who adored Jean Marcel, to desert him this way in the night—and for a timber wolf.
It was strange indeed. Yet he had heard of such things. It was this way that the Esquimos kept up the marvellous strain to which Fleur belonged. He recalled the peculiar actions of the dog during the previous days—the wolf tracks near the camp; her excitement of the night before when the call had sounded over the valley. This wolf had been dogging their trail for a week and Fleur had known it.
"Ah!" he murmured, nodding his head. "Eet ees de spreeng!"
Yes, the spring was slowly creeping north and the creatures of the forest had already answeredits call. It was April, and Fleur, too, had succumbed to an urge stronger for the moment than the love of the master. April, the Crees' "Moon of the Breaking of the Snow-Shoes," when, at last, the wind would begin to shift to the south and the nights lose their edge, only to shift back again, with frost. Then the snow would melt hard at noon, softening the trails, and later on, rain and sleet would drive in from the great Bay turning the white floor of the forest to slush, flooding the ice of the rivers which later would break up and move out, overrunning the shell of pond and lake which late in May would honeycomb and disappear.
Marcel followed the trails of wolf and dog until he lost them on the wind-packed snow of the barren. There was nothing to do but wait. He knew his dog had not forgotten him—would come home; but when? It was high time for his return to the camp in the Salmon country, to his precious cache of meat, which would attract lynxes and wolverines for miles around. The bears would soon leave their "washes" and the uprights of his cache were not proof against bear. But he would not go without Fleur, and she was away, somewhere in the hills.
Three days he waited, continuing to hunt that he might take a full sled-load back to his cache. But the weather was softening and any day now mightmean the start of the big "break-up." It was deep in the third night that a great gray shape burst out of the forest and pounced upon the muffled figure under the shed-tent by the fire. As the dog pawed at the blanketed shape, Marcel, drugged with sleep and bewildered by the attack, was groping for his knife, when a familiar whine and the licks of a warm tongue proclaimed the return of Fleur, and the man threw his arms around his dog.
"Fleur come back to Jean?" Breaking from him, in sheer delight, the dog repeatedly circled the fire, then rearing on her hind legs put her fore-paws on his chest.
"Fleur bad dog to run away wid de wolf!" Marcel seized her by the jowls and shook the massive head, peering into the slant eyes in the dim starlight. And Fleur, as though ashamed of her desertion of the master, pushed her nose under his arm, the rumbling in her throat voicing her joy to be with him again. Then Marcel gave her meat from the cache which she bolted greedily.
It had not entered his mind once he had found her tracks that Fleur would not return to him, but during her long absence the condition of the snow had been a source of worry. Each day's delay meant the chance of the bottom suddenly falling out of the trail before he could freight his load of meat and traps back to his old camp far to the west.Once the big thaw was on, all sledding would be over. So, hurriedly eating his breakfast, he started under the stars, for at noon he would be held up by the softening trail. Toward mid-afternoon, when it turned colder, he would again travel.
Back at his old camp, Marcel found that the fish-hook necklace with which he had circled each of the peeled spruce uprights of his cache had baffled the wolverines and lynxes lured for miles by the odor of meat. Resetting short trap-lines, he waited for the "break-up" with tranquil mind, for his cache groaned with meat.
The snows were fading fast before the rain and sleet of the big thaw. Often, at night, the softening winds shifted, to drive in raw from the north, again tightening the land with frost. But each day, as May neared, the sun swung higher and higher, slowly scattering the snow to flood the ice of myriad lakes and rivers. Already, Marcel had thrilled to the trumpets of the gray vanguards of the Canadas. On fair days the sun flashed from white fleets of "wavies," bound through seas of April skies to far Arctic ports.
With May the buds of birch and poplar began to swell, later to light with the soft green of their young leaves the sombre reaches of upland jack-pine and spruce. Rimming the rivers with red, the new shoots of the willows appeared. At dawn, now, from dripping spires, white-throats and hermit thrush, fleeter than the spring, startled the drowsing forest with a reveille of song.
One afternoon in May on his return from picking up a line of traps to be cached for use the following winter, Marcel went to the neighboring pond to lift his net. For safety on the rapidly sponging ice he wore his snow-shoes and carried a twelve-foot spruce pole. He had reset the net and was lashing an anchor line to a stake when suddenly the honeycombed shell crumbled beneath his feet.
As he sank, he lunged for the pole he had dropped to set the net, but the surface settled under his leap carrying him into the water. Fighting in the mush ice for the pole almost within reach, to his horror he found his right foot trapped. He could not move farther in that direction. The snow-shoe was caught in the net.
Marcel turned back floundering to the edge of firm ice, where he held himself afloat. Fast numbing with cold, as he clung, caught like a beaver in a trap, he knew that it was but a matter of minutes. Fleur, if only Fleur were there! But Fleur was hunting in the "bush."
With a great effort he braced himself on his elbows, got his frozen fingers between his teeth, and blew the signal, once heard, his dog had never failed to answer.
To the joy of the man slowly chilling to the bone, a yelp sounded in the forest. Rallying his ebbing strength, again Marcel whistled. Shortly Fleur appeared on the shore, sighted the master andbounded through the surface slop out to the fishing hole. Reaching Marcel, the husky seized a skin sleeve of his capote and arching her great back, fought the slippery footing in a mad effort to drag him from the water. But the net held him fast.
"De stick, Fleur! De stick dere!" Marcel pointed toward the pole.
Sensing his gesture, the dog brought the pole to the ice edge. Then with the pole bridging the hole, its ends on firm ice, Marcel worked his way to the submerged net, but the sinkers had hopelessly tangled the meshes with his snow-shoe. Under his soggy capote was his knife. His stiff fingers fumbled desperately with the knot of his sash but failed to loose it. Again Fleur seized his sleeve and pulled until she rolled backward with a patch of the tough hide in her teeth.
The situation of the trapped man seemed hopeless. The chill of the water was fast numbing his senses. Already his heart slowed with the torpor of slow freezing. With difficulty now he kept the excited Fleur from plunging beside him into the mush ice.
Then with a final effort he got his free leg with its snow-shoe, over the pole, and seizing the husky's tail with both hands, cried:
"Marche, Fleur! Marche!"
Settling low between wide-spread fore-legs, thedog dug her nails into the soft ice and hurled her weight into a fierce lunge. As her feet slipped, the legs of the husky worked like piston rods showering Marcel's face with water, her nails gouging the ice, while she fought the drag of the net.
At last, something gave way, Marcel felt himself move. Slowly the great dog drew her master over the pole and upon the ice with the net still anchored to his right foot.
Still gripping Fleur's tail in his left hand, with the other he finally reached his knife and groping in the icy water slashed the heel thong of the caught shoe. Free, Marcel limped to his camp, Fleur, now leaping beside him, now marching proudly with his sleeve in her teeth.
The heat of the fire and the hot broth soon started the blood of the half-frozen Frenchman, who lay muffled in a blanket. Near him sprawled the husky, who had sensed only too acutely on the ice the danger menacing her master and would not now leave his sight, but with head on paws watched the blanketed figure through eyes which spoke the thoughts she could not express: "Jean may need Fleur again. She will stay with him by the fire."
Once too often, Marcel mused, he had gambled with the rotten spring ice, and now had barely missed paying for his rashness. To drown in a hole like a muskrat, after pulling out of the starvationdays with a cache heavy with meat and fish, was unthinkable. But, after all, what did it matter? Life would be of small value now with Julie out of it.
When, late in May, the snow had left the open places reached by the sun and the ice cleared the rivers, Marcel was ready to make his first trip to the camp on the Ghost. Poor Antoine would have to lie content in a shallow grave among the boulders of the river shore, for the frost was still in the ground. Before the weather softened Jean had smoked the remainder of his meat and now he faced a ten-mile portage with his outfit. Before the trails went bad he could have freighted on the sled sufficient food for his journey home but had preferred to face the "break-up" in his own camp near a fish-lake and relay his meat over on his back in May. The memories of the winter aroused by the camp on the Ghost were too grim to attract him to the comfortable shack.
One morning at sunrise, after lashing a pack on Fleur's broad back, he threw his tump-line over a bag of smoked meat and swinging it to his shoulders, started over the trail. In the middle of the forenoon he walked into the clearing on the Ghost and pushing off the head strap of his line, dropped his load.
Glancing at the cache where he had left the body of Antoine Beaulieu lashed in canvas with the fur-packs and rifles of the dead men, Marcel muttered in surprise:
"By Gar! Dat ees strange t'ing!"
The scaffold was empty; the body of Antoine had been removed and not a vestige remained of the fur-packs and outfits of Jean's partners. Neither wolverines, lynxes nor bears, had they been able to overcome the fish-hook barriers guarding the uprights, would have stripped the platform in such fashion. Searching the soft earth, he found the faint tracks of moccasins which the recent rain had not obliterated. But down on the river shore the mud told the story. A canoe had landed there within a week, for in spite of the rain the deep impress of the feet of men carrying heavy loads still marked the beach. Since the ice went out someone who knew that the three men were wintering there, had travelled up the Ghost from the Whale, but why? They could not have been starving, for fish could then be had on the Whale for the setting of a net. Evidently they had buried Antoine and taken the fur-packs, rifles, and outfits of the two men to Whale River. Marcel searched for a message, in the phonetic writing employed throughout the north, burned into a blazed tree, or on a scrap of birch-bark, left in the shack, but found nothing.The cabin was as he had last seen it. They had thought him, also, dead somewhere in the "bush" and had left no word, or——Then the situation opened to him from the angle of view of the Cree visitors.
A camp on the verge of starvation, witnessed by the depleted cache; a dead man stabbed to the heart, with his rifle and outfit beside him; also, the rifle and personal belongings, easily identified by his relatives, of a second man, who, if he were still alive, would have had them in his possession. Of the third man, who was to winter with them, no trace at the camp. Two dead and the third, possibly alive, if he had not starved out. And that third man was Jean Marcel.
That was the grim tale which was travelling down the river ahead of him to the spring trade. Who killed Antoine Beaulieu, and where is Piquet? This was the question he would have to answer. This the factor and the kinsmen of his partners would demand of the third man, if he survived to reach the post. Yes, Whale River would anxiously await the return of Jean Marcel that spring, but would Whale River believe his story? Of the people of the post he had no doubt. Julie, Père Breton, the factor, Angus, Jules, he could count on. They knew him—were his friends. But the Crees, and half-breds; would they believe that JoePiquet had been the evil genius of the tragedy on the Ghost, Joe Piquet, now dead and helpless to speak in his own defense? Would they believe in the innocence of the man who alone of the three partners had fought free of the long famine? Marcel's knowledge of the Indians' mental make-up told him that since the visit of the Crees to the camp his case was hopeless.
They would readily believe that he had killed his partners for the remaining food, and, not anticipating the coming of a canoe in the spring to the camp, had gone after caribou, planning to secrete the body of Antoine, with its evidence of violence, on his return.
Of those who had peopled the canoes starting for the up-river summer camps in July, many a face would now be absent when the Crees returned for this year's trade. Famine surely had come to more than one camp of the red hunters that winter; and doubtless, swift death in the night, also, among some of those, who, when caught by the rabbit plague and the absence of wintering caribou, like Piquet, went mad with hunger. Disease, too, as a hawk strikes a ptarmigan, would have struck down many a helpless child and woman marooned in snow-drifted tepee in the silent places. Old age would have claimed its toll in the bitter January winds.
To the red hunters, starvation and tragic death wore familiar faces. In the wide north they were common enough. So, when in the spring, men loosed from the maw of the pitiless snows returned without comrade, wife or child, seeking succor at the fur-posts, with tales of death by starvation or disease, the absence of witnesses or evidence compelled the acceptance of their stories however suspicious the circumstances. There being no proof of guilt, and because, moreover, their tales were often true, there could be no punishment, except the covert condemnation of their fellows or the secret vengeance of kinsman or friend in the guise of a shot from the "bush" or knife thrust in the dark. He recalled the cases he knew or which he had heard discussed over many a camp-fire, of men on the East Coast, sole survivors of starvation camps, who would go to their graves privately branded as murderers by their fellows.
Grim tales of his father returned to him; of the half-breed from Nichicun who, it was commonly believed, had eaten his partner; of Crees who had appeared in the spring at the posts without parents, or wives and children, to tell conflicting stories of death through disease or starvation; of the Frenchman at Mistassini—still a valued servant of the Company—who was known from Fort Albany to Whale River and from Rupert to thePeribonka, as the squaw-man who saved himself on the Fading Waters by deserting his Montagnais girl wife. These and many more, through lack of any proof of guilt, had escaped the long arm of the government which, through the fur-posts, reached to the uttermost valleys of the north.
And so it must have been with Jean Marcel, however suspicious his story, had he buried Antoine somewhere in the snow, as he had Piquet, instead of lashing the body on the cache with its telltale death wound. As it was he already saw himself, though innocent, condemned in the court of Cree opinion as the slayer of his friend.
As he came to a realization of how his case would look, even to the whites at Whale River, he cursed the dead man Piquet for bringing all this upon a guiltless man—for leaving him this black legacy of suspicion.
Well, he swore to himself, they should believe his story at the post, for it was the truth; and if any man, white or red, openly doubted his innocence, he would have to answer to Jean Marcel. To be branded on the East Coast as the assassin of his partners was a bitter draught for the palate of the proud Frenchman. For generations the Marcels had borne an honored name in the Company's service and now for the last of them to be suspected of foul murder, was disgrace unthinkable.
So ran his thoughts as he hurried back over the trail to his camp. Of one thing he felt sure. The situation brought about by the visit of the Crees demanded his presence at the post as soon after their arrival as his paddle could drive his canoe. From the appearance of the tracks on the beach they already had a good start and it would take two days for him to pack to the Ghost what meat and outfit he needed for the trip, besides his furs. The rest he could cache.