The following morning Jean Marcel forgot the cloud hanging over him in his joy at the event which had taken place since dawn. Rousing Julie and her brother, he led them to the stockade. There in all the pride of motherhood lay the great Fleur with five blind, roly-poly puppies, whimpering at her side.
"Oh, the little dears!" cried Julie. "How pretty they are!"
First speaking to Fleur and patting her head, Jean picked up a squirming ball of fur and as the mother whined anxiously, put it in Julie's arms.
"Oh, mon cher!" cried the girl, nestling the warm little body to her cheek. "What a morsel of softness!" But when Père Breton reached to touch the puppy a rumble from Fleur's deep throat warned him that Julie alone was privileged to take such liberties with her offspring.
Jean quieted the anxious mother, whose nose sought his hand. "See, Father, what a dog-team she has given me."
One after another he proudly exhibited the puppies. "Mark the bone of their legs. They will make a famous team with Fleur as leader. Is it not so?"
"They are a possession to be proud of, Jean," agreed the priest, standing discreetly out of reach, for Fleur's slant eyes never left him.
"Which of them do you wish, Julie?" Jean asked. "One, you know, is for you."
"Oh, Jean; you are too good!" cried the girl. "I should love this one, marked like Fleur," and she stooped to take the whimpering puppy in her arms, while Jean's hand rested on Fleur's massive head, lest the fear of the mother dog for the safety of her offspring should overpower her friendship for Julie.
As the girl fearlessly reached and lifted the puppy, Fleur suddenly thrust forward her long muzzle and licked her hand.
"Bon!" cried Jean, delighted. "Fleur would allow no one on earth to do that except you. The puppy's name must be Julie."
In his joy at the coming of Fleur's family Marcel had forgotten, for the time being, the hearing. But later in the morning at the trade-house, Gillies, whose obstinacy had been deeply aroused by the attitude of Inspector Wallace, planned with the accused man how they should handle the Lelacs.
For the factor had no intention of permittingJean's exoneration to hang in the balance of the prejudiced mind of Wallace. The canny Scot realized that if the Lelacs were thoroughly discredited at the hearing at which the leaders of the Crees would be present; were shown to have an ulterior motive in their attempt to fix the crime upon Marcel, there would be a strong reaction in favor of Jean—that his story would be generally accepted; so to this end he carefully laid his plans. Wallace, busy prying into the books of the post, he did not take into his confidence, wishing to surprise him as well as the Crees by the bomb-shell the defense had in store for the Lelacs.
At noon Wallace overheard Jules and McCain talking of Fleur's puppies which they had just seen.
"By the way, McCain, where are these remarkable Ungava pups which you say were sired by a timber wolf?"
"Over in the Mission stockade, sir."
"I want to see them and the old dog, too. I'm rather curious to put my eyes on the husky that could kill a man with a loaded gun in his hands. That part of Marcel's story needs a bit of salt."
"You won't doubt it when you see her! She's a whale of a husky," said McCain.
"Well, I never saw the dog that could kill me with a rifle handy. I'll stroll over and take a look at her."
"I'll show you the way." And McCain and Wallace went to the Mission.
Arrived at the tent in the stockade they were greeted by a fierce rumble, like the muttering of an August south-wester making on the Bay.
"We'd better not go near the tent, Mr. Wallace. I'll see if Jean's in the house. The dog won't allow anyone but Marcel near her."
Ignoring the warning, Wallace approached the tent opening to look inside, but so fierce a snarl warned him off that he stepped back with considerably more speed than his dignity admitted. Red in the face, he glanced around to learn if his precipitous flight had had an audience.
Shortly, McCain returned with Marcel, and Wallace, now that the dog's owner was near, again approached and peered into the tent.
There was a deep growl from within, and with a cry of surprise the Inspector was hurled backward to the ground by the rush of a great, gray body. At the same instant, Jean Marcel, calling to Fleur, leaped headlong at his dog, seizing her before she could strike at the neck of the prostrate Wallace. Calming the husky, he held her while the discomfited Inspector got to his feet.
"You should not go so near, M'sieu. She ees not use to stranger," said Jean brusquely.
"I—I didn't think she was so cross," sputteredthe ruffled Inspector. "Why, she's a regular wolf of a dog!"
"Now, sir," demanded the secretly delighted McCain, "do you believe she could kill a man?"
Surveying Fleur's gigantic frame critically as Jean stroked her glossy neck, soothing her with low words crooned into a hairy ear, the enlightened Inspector of the East Coast posts admitted:
"Well, I don't know but what she could. I never saw such a beast for size and strength. Let's have a look at the pups."
Jean brought from the tent the blind, squirming balls of fur.
"They are beauties, Marcel! I'll buy a couple of them. They can go down by the steamer if they're weaned by that time. What do you want for them?"
Marcel smiled inscrutably at Inspector Wallace and said:
"M'sieu, dese pups are not to sell."
"I know, but you don't want all of them. That would give you six dogs. All you need for a team is four."
But Jean Marcel only shook his head, repeating:
"Dey are not to sell!"
The trading-room at Whale River was crowded with the treaty chiefs and older men among the Cree hunters chosen by the factor to be present at the hearing. Behind a huge table made from hewn spruce slabs, sat Inspector Wallace, Colin Gillies and McCain. In front and to one side were the swart half-breeds, Gaspard Lelac and his two sons. Facing them on the opposite side of the table was Jean Marcel, and behind him, his advisor, Père Breton, with Julie; for she had insisted on being present, and the smitten Wallace had readily agreed. The remainder of the room was occupied by the Crees, expectant, consumed with curiosity, for it had leaked out that certain matters connected with the tragedy on the Ghost which, heretofore, had not been divulged, would that afternoon be given light.
Among the assembled half-breeds and Crees there were two distinct factions. Those who had readily accepted the story of the Lelacs with its sinister indictment of Marcel, among whom were the kinsmen of Antoine Beaulieu; and those, who, knowing JeanMarcel, as well as his unsavory accusers, had refused to accept the half-breeds' tale, and were waiting with eagerness to hear Marcel's defense; for as yet, Marcel, under orders from Gillies, had refused to discuss the case. Outside the trade-house, chattering groups of young men and Cree women were gathered, awaiting the outcome of the proceedings.
Rising, Colin Gillies called for silence and addressed the Crees in their picturesque tongue:
"The long snows have come and gone. Famine and suffering have again visited the hunters of Whale River. With the return of the rabbit plague, and the lack of deer, many of those who were here last year at the spring trade have gone to join their fathers. The Company is sad that its hunters and their families have suffered. Last autumn, three hunters went from this post to winter on the Ghost River. This spring but one returned. He is here now, for the reason that he travelled far into the great barrens to streams which join the Big Water many, many sleeps to the northeast, where at last he found the returning deer.
"This spring, when the Ghost was free of ice, Gaspard Lelac and his sons, wishing to visit their kinsman, Joe Piquet, travelled to the camp of the three hunters. What they found there they will now tell as they told it to me when they came to Whale River. After you have learned their story,Jean Marcel, the man who returned, will relate what happened on the Ghost under the moons of the long snows.
"The Company has sent to visit Whale River its chief of the East Coast, Inspector Wallace. He will hear the stories of these men and decide which of them speaks with a double tongue. It is for you, also, when they have spoken, to say whether Gaspard Lelac and his sons bring the truth to Whale River, or Jean Marcel. You know these men. Hear their talk and judge in your hearts between them. Gaspard Lelac has put the blood of Antoine Beaulieu and Joe Piquet on the head of Jean Marcel. The fathers at Ottawa and the Chiefs of the Company at Winnipeg will not suffer one of their children to go unpunished who takes the life of another.
"Listen to the speech of these men. Look with your eyes into their faces and upon what will be shown here, and judge who speaks with a double tongue and who from an honest heart. Gaspard Lelac will now tell what he saw and did."
As Gillies finished, a murmur of approval filled the room, followed by a tense silence.
Lelac, a grizzled French half-breed with small, closely-set eyes, which shifted here and there as he spoke, then rose and told in the Cree tongue the story he had retailed daily for the previous month.
Wishing to visit his nephew Piquet, he said, and learn how he had weathered the hard winter, in May Lelac and his sons had poled up the Ghost to the camp. There they found an empty cache and part of the outfits of Beaulieu and Piquet, the latter of which they at once recognized. Alarmed, they searched the vicinity of the camp, and by chance, discovered the body of Beaulieu buried under stones on the shore. There was a knife wound in his chest. They continued the search in hope of finding Piquet, as his blankets and outfit, evidently unused for months and eaten by mice, were strong proof of his death, also; but failed to find the body. Of the fur-packs and rifles of the two men there was no trace, but a knife, identified later as belonging to Antoine, they brought back. There were no signs of the third man's outfit about the camp. If the third man was alive, what were they to believe? Antoine was dead, and Piquet, also, for his blankets were there. Someone had killed Antoine and Piquet. There was but one other, Marcel. So they travelled to Whale River with the news.
The sons of Lelac glibly corroborated the story of their father. When they had finished, the trade-room buzzed with whispered comment.
At a nod from Wallace, Gillies questioned the older Lelac in Cree for the benefit of the Indians.
"You say that these blankets here, this knife andcooking kit, and the clothes and bags, were all that you found at the camp—that there were no fur and rifles on the cache?"
"These were all we found—nothing else," replied Lelac, his small eyes wavering before the gaze of the factor.
"You swear that you found nothing but these things," repeated Gillies, pointing to the articles on the floor in front of the table.
"Nothing."
The set face of Jean Marcel, which had remained expressionless during the Lelacs' statement, relaxed in a wide smile which did not escape many a shrewd pair of Cree eyes.
"Jean Marcel will now relate what passed on the Ghost through the moons of the long snows."
With the announcement, there was much stirring and shuffling of moccasins accompanied by suppressed exclamations and muttering, among the expectant Crees. But when Marcel rose, squared his wide shoulders, and with head high ran his eyes over the assembled Crees, friendly and hostile, to rest at length on the Lelacs, his lips curled with an expression of contempt, while the Indians and breeds relapsed into silence.
Slowly, and in detail, Jean told in the Cree language how his partners had gone up-river when he started south on the trail of the dog-thieves; howhe recaptured Fleur, and later reached the Ghost at the "freeze-up." The tale of his nine-hundred-mile journey to the south coast drew many an "Ah-hah!" of mingled surprise and admiration from those who remembered Marcel's voyage of the previous spring through the spirit-haunted valleys of the Salmon headwaters. With his familiarity with the Cree mental make-up and his French instinct for dramatic values, he held them breathless by the narration of this Odyssey of the north.
Then Marcel described the long weeks when the three men fought starvation, with the deer and rabbits gone; how he travelled far into the land of the Windigo in search of beaver; and finally, he came to the break with his partners. The hard feeling which developed at the camp on the Ghost, Jean made no attempt to gloss over, but boldly told how the others had not played fair with the food, and he had left them to fight out the winter alone. Of the death of Piquet he spoke as one speaks of the extermination of vermin. An assassin in the night, Piquet had come to the tent of a sleeping man and the dog alone had saved his life.
They called his dog the "man-killer." Would they have asked less of their own huskies? he demanded. But if any of them doubted, and he understood that the Lelacs were among these, that his dog could have killed Piquet, let them come to thetent in the Mission stockade by night—and learn for themselves.
"Nama, no!" some Indian audibly protested, and for a space the room was a riot of laughter, for the Crees had seen Fleur, the "man-killer."
But when the narrative of Marcel reached the discovery of the dead Antoine, stabbed to the heart in the shack on the Ghost, his voice broke with emotion. When he had found Antoine, killed in his sleep by Piquet, Marcel said that he had bitterly regretted that he had not taken Beaulieu with him, leaving Piquet to work out his own fate.
Then Jean described how he had lashed the body of Antoine, sewed in a tent, on the platform cache, and placed the fur-packs and rifles beside it, when he left to go into the barrens for deer. Turning, the Frenchman pointed his finger at the scowling Lelacs, and cried dramatically, "When you came to the camp this spring, you did not find the body of Antoine Beaulieu buried on the shore; you found it on the cache sewed in a tent. If I had killed him would I not have hidden him somewhere in the snow where the starving lynx and wolverines would have done the rest? No, you found Antoine on the cache, and beside him were his rifle and fur-pack with those of Joe Piquet. What did you do with them?"
His evil face distorted with rage, the elder Lelac snarled:
"You lie, you got de fur and rifle hid."
Suppressing the half-breeds, Wallace ordered Marcel to continue.
Jean finished his story with the account of his long journey into the barrens beyond the Height-of-Land where the streams flowed northeast instead of west, his meeting with the returning deer, when weak with starvation, and his return to the Ghost to find that a canoe had preceded him there.
As he resumed his seat, the eyes of Julie Breton were bright with tears. The priest leaned and grasped Jean's hand, whispering: "Well done, Jean Marcel!"
It had been a dramatic narration and the audience, including Inspector Wallace to whom it was interpreted by Gillies, had been impressed by the frank and fearless manner of its telling.
Angus McCain and big Jules smiled widely as they caught Marcel's eyes.
Again Gillies rose. "Jules!" he called, and Duroc brought from an adjoining room a bundle of pelts, placing them on the long table.
Again the room hummed with the whispering of the curious audience. The surprised Lelacs, now in a panic, talked excitedly, heads together.
"Marcel, examine these pelts and if you noticeanything about them, make a statement," said Gillies, conducting the examination for the benefit of the Crees, in their native tongue, and translating to Wallace.
With great care, as his Cree audience craned their necks to watch what the Frenchman was doing, Jean, first examining each pelt, slowly divided the bundle of skins into three separate heaps.
"Have you anything to say?"
"Yes, M'sieu. This large pile here, I know nothing about; but this heap here, were all pelts trapped last winter by Antoine Beaulieu."
A murmur passed through the crowded room. Here surely was something of interest. Lelac rose and started to look at the pelts when big Jules pushed him roughly back on the bench.
"You stay where you are, Lelac, or I'll put a guard over you!" rasped Gillies.
"This pile here," continued Jean, "belonged to Joe Piquet."
"How do you recognize them?" demanded Gillies.
"All these have Antoine's mark, one little slit behind the right fore-leg. These with two slits behind the left fore-leg were the pelts of Piquet. My mark was three slits in front of the left hind leg. When we started trapping from the same camp, we agreed on these marks."
The air of the trade-room was heavy with suspense.
"You swear to these marks?"
"Yes, M'sieu."
"François Maskigan!" The treaty-chief of the South Branch Crees, a man of middle age, with great authority among the Indians, stepped forward.
"François, you have heard what Marcel says of the marks on these skins?"
The chief nodded, "Enh, yes."
"Look at them and see if he speaks rightly."
It took the Indian but a few minutes to check the distinguishing marks on the pelts and examine the large pile which Marcel had said possessed none.
"Are the marks on these pelts as Marcel says?"
"Yes, they are there, these marks as he says."
The cowed Lelacs, their dark faces now twisted with fear, awaited the next words of Gillies. Then the irate factor turned on them.
"Gaspard Lelac!" he roared. The face of Lelac paled to a sickly white as his furtive eyes met the factor's.
"All this fur, here, you and your sons traded in last week; your own fur, and the pelts of Beaulieu and Joe Piquet, dead men. I have held them separate from the rest. You are thieves and liars!"
The bomb had exploded. At the words of the factor, the trade-room became a bedlam of chattering and excited Indians. In the north, to steal the fur of another is one of the cardinal sins. The supporters of Marcel loudly exulted in the turn the hearing had taken, while the deluded adherents of the Lelacs, maddened by the villainy of men who had stolen from the dead and accused another, loudly cursed the half-breeds.
Nonplussed, paralyzed by the trick of the factor, instigated by the adroit Marcel, the Lelacs sent murderous looks at Jean who smiled contemptuously in their faces.
Gillies' deep bass quieted the uproar.
"Jules!" he called the second time. All were on tiptoe to learn what further surprise the stalwart Jules had in store for them, when he entered the room with two rifles, which he laid on the table, while the Lelacs stared in wide-eyed amazement.
"Where did you get these rifles?" asked Gillies.
"In the tepee of Lelac, just now, hidden under blankets."
"Whose rifles were they, Marcel?"
Marcel examined the guns.
"This 30-30 gun belonged to Piquet. This is the rifle of Antoine."
With a cry, a tall half-breed roughly shouldered his way to the front of the excited Crees.
"You thieves!" he cried, straining to reach the Lelacs with the knife which he held in his hand. But sinewy arms seized him and the frenzied uncle of Antoine Beaulieu was pushed, struggling, from the room.
It was the final straw. The mercurial Crees had turned as quickly from the Lelacs to Marcel as, in the first instance, they had credited the tale of the half-breeds. Now, with the Lelacs proven liars and thieves, Jean's explanation of the deaths of his partners, as Gillies foresaw, had, without corroboration, and on his word as a man, only, been at once accepted.
Calling for silence Gillies again spoke to the hunters.
"You have heard the words of these men. You have judged who has spoken with a double tongue; who, with the guns of dead men hidden in a tepee, have traded their fur and put their blood upon the head of another. Do you believe Jean Marcel when he says that Piquet killed Antoine Beaulieu and went out to kill him also, or do you believe the men who stole the guns and fur of a dead man which belong to his kinsmen?"
"Enh! Enh!Jean Marcel speaks truth!" cried the Crees, and the chattering mob poured into the post clearing to carry the news to the curious young men and the women, who waited.
Meanwhile Père Breton embraced the happy Marcel while the unchecked tears welled in Julie's eyes. Then Gillies and McCain wrung the Frenchman's hand until he grimaced. But the big Jules, patiently waiting his turn, pounced upon Jean with a fierce hug and, in spite of his protests carrying him like a child in his great arms from the trade-house, showed the man they had maligned, to the Crees, who now loudly cheered him.
Turning to Gillies, the Inspector said gravely: "These Lelacs go south for trial. I'll make an example of their thieving."
But Colin Gillies had no intention of having the half-breeds sent "outside" for trial, if he could prevent it. It would mean that Jean and he, himself, with Jules, would have to go as witnesses. He could take care of the Lelacs in his own way. He had punished men before.
"That would leave us very short-handed here. The famine has reduced the trade this year a third. If we want to make a showing next season, we can't spend six months travelling down below for a trial."
"Yes, that would mean your going and we can't afford to injure the trade; but I ought to make a report on this murder business in famine years."
"If you get the government into this, it will hurt us, Mr. Wallace. Why can't we handle this matteras we have handled it for two centuries?" protested Gillies. "A report will only place the Company in a bad light—make them think we can't control the Crees."
"Well, perhaps you're right," admitted Wallace. "I'm out to make a showing on the East Coast and I don't want to handicap you."
So Gillies had his way.
To Jean Marcel it had been a happy moment—that of his exoneration by the hunters of Whale River. For weeks, with rage in his heart, he had silently borne the black looks of the Crees whom he could not avoid in going to his net and crossing the post clearing to the trade-house. For weeks his name had been a byword at the spring trade—Marcel, the man who had murdered his partners. But now the stain of infamy had been washed clean from an honored name. In his humble grave in the Mission Cemetery, André Marcel could now sleep in peace, for in the eyes of the small world of the East Coast, his son had come scathless through the long snows. The tale would not now travel down the coast in the Inspector's canoe that another white man had turned murderer for the scanty food of his friends.
And with his acquittal by the Company and the Crees, his love for Julie Breton, more poignant from its very hopelessness, gave him no rest. As he struggled with renunciation, he brought himselfto realize that, after all, it had been but presumption on his part to hope that this girl with her education of years in a Quebec convent, her acquaintance with the ways of the great world "outside," should look upon a humble Company hunter as a possible husband. He had all along mistaken her kindness, her friendship, for something more which she had never felt. In comparison with Wallace who, Jean had heard Gillies say, might some day go to Winnipeg as Assistant Commissioner of the Company, he was as nothing. Doomed by his inheritance and his training to a life beyond the pale of civilization, he could offer Julie Breton little but a love that knew no bounds, no frontiers; that would find no trail, which led to her, too long; no water too vast; no height too sheer; to separate them, did she but call him.
So, in the hour of his triumph, the soul-sick Marcel went to one who never had failed him; who loved him with a singleness of heart but rarely paralleled by human kind; who, however humble his lot, would give him the worship accorded to no king—his dog.
Seated beside Fleur with her squealing children crawling over him, he circled her great neck with his arms and told his troubles to a hairy ear. She sought his hand with her tongue, her throat rumbling with content, for had she not there on thegrass in the soft June sun, all her world—her puppies and her God, Jean Marcel?
There, Julie Breton, having in vain announced supper from the Mission door, found them, man and dog, and led Marcel away, protesting. The girl wore the frock she had donned in honor of his return, and never to Jean had she seemed so vibrant with life, never had the color bathed her dark face so exquisitely, nor the tumbled masses of her hair so allured him. But as he entered the Mission, he saw Inspector Wallace seated in conversation with the priest, and his heart went cold.
During the meal, served by a Cree woman, the admiring eyes of Wallace seldom left Julie's face. At first he seemed surprised at the presence of Marcel at the table but the priest made it quite evident to the Company man that Jean was as one of the family. However, as the Frenchman rarely joined in the conversation and early excused himself, leaving Wallace a free field, the Inspector's temper at what might have seemed presumption in a Company hunter was unmarred.
July came and to the surprise of Gillies and Whale River, the big Company canoe still remained under its tarpaulin on the post landing. That the priest looked kindly on the possibility of such a brother-in-law was evident from his hospitality to Wallace, but what piqued the curiosity of ColinGillies and McCain was whether Wallace, a Scotch Protestant, had as yet accepted the Catholic faith, for the Oblat, Père Breton, could not marry his sister to a man of another religious belief. However, deep in the spell of the charming Julie, Inspector Wallace stayed on after the trade was over, giving as his reason his desire to go south with the Company steamer which shortly would be due.
Although to Jean she was the same merry Julie, each morning visiting the stockade to play with Fleur's puppies, who now had their eyes well open and were beginning to find an uncertain balance, he avoided her, rarely seeing her except at meal time. Of the change in their relations he never spoke, but man-like he was hurt that she failed to take him to task for his moodiness. In the evening, now, she walked on the river-shore with Wallace, and talked through the twilight when the sun lingered below the rim of the world in the west. Jean Marcel had gone out of her life. He ceased to mention the Inspector's name, and absented himself from meals when the Scotchman was expected.
Julie had said: "Jean, you are one of us, always welcome. Why do you stay away when Monsieur Wallace comes?" And he had answered: "You know why I stay away, Julie Breton."
That was all.
One night when Jean returned late from his nets after a long paddle, seeking the exhaustion that would bring sleep and temporary respite from his grief, a canoe manned by three men drifted alongshore toward his beached canoe. Occupied with his thoughts, Marcel took no notice of the craft. Removing from the boat the fish he had caught, he was about to lift and place it bottom up on the beach when the bow of the approaching birch-bark suddenly swung sharply and jammed into the stern of his own.
With an exclamation of irritation at the clumsiness of the people in the offending canoe, Jean looked up to stare into the faces of the three Lelacs.
"You are good canoeman," he sneered, roughly pushing with his paddle the half-breeds' canoe from his own. That the act was intentional, he knew, but he was surprised that the Lelacs, convicted of theft, and on parole at the post awaiting the Company's decision as to their punishment, would dare to start trouble.
As Jean shoved off the Lelacs' canoe, the half-breeds, as if at a preconcerted signal, shouted loudly:
"W'at you do to us, Jean Marcel? Ough! Why you beat me wid de paddle? He try to keel us!"
The near beach was deserted, but the shouts in the still night were audible on the post clearing above. The uproar waked the sleeping huskies at the few remaining Esquimo tepees on the shore, whose howling quickly aroused the post dogs.
It was evident to Jean that his enemies had chosen their time and place. Obeying scrupulously the orders of Gillies since the trial, Marcel had avoided the Lelacs, holding in check the just wrath which had prompted him to take personal vengeance upon his traducers. Now, instead, they had sought him, but from their actions, intended to make him seem the aggressor.
"Bon!" he muttered between his teeth. Life had little value to him now, he would give these thieves what they were after.
"You 'fraid to come on shore? You squeal lak' rabbit; you t'ief!" he taunted.
Continuing to shout that Marcel was attacking them, the Lelacs landed their canoe and the elder son, evidently drunk, lurched toward the man who waited.
"Rabbit, am I?" roared the frenzied half-breed, and struck savagely at Jean with his paddle.Dodging the blow, before the breed could recover his balance, the Frenchman lunged with his one hundred and seventy pounds behind his fist into Lelac's jaw, hurling him reeling into the water ten feet away. Then the two Lelacs reached him.
Gasping for breath, the younger brother fell backward, helpless from a kick in the pit of his stomach as the maddened Marcel grappled with the father. Over and over they rolled on the beach, Lelac, frenzied by drink, snarling with hate of the man he had tried to destroy, fighting like a trapped wolverine; the no less infuriated Marcel resolved now to rid Whale River forever of this vermin.
It was not long before the bands of steel cable which swathed the arms, shoulders and back of Jean Marcel overcame the delirious strength of the crazed half-breed, and Lelac was forced down and held on his back. Then like the jaws of a wolf-trap, the fingers of Marcel's right hand shut on the throat of the under man. The bloodshot eyes of Lelac bulged from their sockets. Blood filled the distorted face. The mouth gaped for air, barred by the vise on his throat. In a last feeble effort to free himself, a helpless hand clawed limply at Marcel's wrist—then he relaxed, unconscious, on the beach.
Getting to his feet, Jean looked for the others, to see the younger brother still nursing his stomach, when an oath sounded in his ears and, struck fromthe rear, a sharp twinge bit through his shoulder, as he stumbled forward.
Leaping away from a second lunge, and drawing his knife with his left hand, Marcel slashed wildly, driving before him the half-breed whom the water had revived. Then, as he fought to reach him, the shape of his retreating enemy slowly faded from Marcel's vision; his strength ebbed; the knife slipped from his fingers as darkness shut down upon him, and he reeled senseless to the stones.
With a snarl of triumph, Lelac, crouched on the defensive, sprang to the crumpled figure, a hand raised to drive home the knife-thrust, when something sang shrilly through the air. The upraised arm fell. With a groan, the half-breed pitched on his face, the slender shaft of a seal-spear quivering in his back.
Close by, a kayak silently slid to the shore and a squat Husky, his broad face knotted with fear, ran to the unconscious Marcel. Swiftly cutting the shirt from the Frenchman's back, he was staunching the flow of blood from the knife wound, when people from the post clearing, headed by Jules Duroc, reached the beach.
"By Gar! Jean Marcel!" gasped Jules recognizing his friend. "He ees cut bad?"
The Husky shook his head. "He not kill."
Staring at the dead man transfixed by the spear and his unconscious father, Jules roared: "De t'ief, dey tryrevancheon Jean Marcel!"
Stripping off his own shirt, Jules bandaged Marcel's shoulder. As he worked, one thing he told himself. Had they killed Marcel, the Lelacs would not have gone south for trial. Father and son would never have left the beach at Whale River alive.
Then he said to the gathering Crees, "Tak' dem!" pointing to the younger Lelac now shedding maudlin tears over his dead brother, and to the half-choked father, resuscitated by a rough immersion in the river from unfriendly hands. Seizing the pair, rapidly sobering and now fearful for their fate, the Crees kicked them up the cliff trail.
"Tiens!" exclaimed Jules to the Husky, finishing the bandaging. "Dey try keel Marcel but he lay out two w'en he get de cut?"
The Husky nodded, "A-hah! I hear holler an' dey run on heem. He put all down. One in water, he get up an' cut heem wid knife. He fall and, whish! I spear dat one."
"By Gar! You good man wid de seal-spear, John Kovik." And Jules wrung the Esquimo's hand.
"I cum fast een kayak to fight for heem; I too slow," and the Husky shook his head sadly.
"Ah, you cum jus' een time. You save hees life."
The Husky placed a hand on the thick hair of the senseless man, as he said, "He ketch boy, Salmon Rive'. He frien' of me!"
Jean Marcel's bread upon the waters had returned to him.
With the unconscious Marcel in his arms, Jules Duroc climbed the cliff, the grateful Kovik at his heels, to meet the inhabitants of Whale River on the clearing. The news of the fight on the beach had spread swiftly through the post and many and fierce were the threats made against the Lelacs as they were shut in a small shack and placed under guard.
In front of the trade-house, Gillies, followed by McCain and Wallace, met Jules with his burden.
"How did this happen, Jules? Is he badly hurt?" demanded the factor. Jules explained briefly.
"Stabbed in the back? Too bad! Too bad! Take him to the Mission Hospital."
"Well, Gillies, this settles it! The Lelacs go south for trial, now, and they won't need you as a witness either," announced Wallace.
"Yes, we'll have to get rid of them," admitted the factor. "They were crazy to do this after what has happened. I should have shut them up. Toobad Jean didn't use his knife instead of his hands on them!"
"Or his feet!" added McCain. "The Husky says he put one Lelac out of business with a kick and choked the old man unconscious, when the one who was knocked into the river stabbed him. He fought them with his bare hands. I take off my hat to Jean Marcel."
"Who started this affair, anyway?" asked Wallace. "The Lelacs, under a cloud here, couldn't have dared to."
Gillies turned on his chief.
"What do we care who started it? Haven't they tried to ruin Marcel? I ordered him to keep away from them, but didn't he have sufficient cause to start—anything?"
"The Crees say the Lelacs got drunk on sugar-beer and were waiting for Jean to get back from down river," broke in McCain, fearing a row between Gillies and the Inspector. "John Kovik, the Husky, saw them rush him, and John got there in time to throw his seal-spear at young Lelac, after he had stabbed Marcel from behind."
"Oh, that explains it; Marcel was defending himself," said the ruffled Inspector.
"Yes, and you will notice, Mr. Wallace," rasped Gillies, "that Marcel fought them with his hands, until he was cut, one man against three. If he hadused his knife on the old man, he wouldn't have been hurt. Does that prove what we've told you about him?"
It was at this point that Julie Breton and her brother, late in hearing the news, reached Jules carrying his burden, whose bandages were now reddening with blood.
"Oh, Jules, is he badly hurt?" cried the girl, peering in the dusk at the ashen face of Marcel. Then she noticed the bandages, and putting her hands to her face, moaned: "Jean Marcel, what have they done to you; what have they done to you?"
"Eet bleed hard, Ma'm'selle," Jules said softly, "but eet ees onlee een de shouldair. Don' cry, Ma'm'selle Julie!"
Supporting the sobbing girl, Père Breton ordered:
"Carry him to the Mission, Jules."
"Yes, Father!" And Jean Marcel returned again to a room in the Mission.
Tenderly rough hands bathed and dressed the knife wound and through the night Père Breton sat by his patient, who moaned and tossed in the delirium which the fever brought.
Deep in the night a long, mournful howl, repeated again and again, roused the sleeping post. Straightway the dogs of the factor and the Crees, followed by the Esquimos' huskies on the beach, were pointing their noses at the moon in dismal chorus. With muttered curse and protest from tepee, shack and factor's quarters, the wakened people of the post, covering their ears, sought sleep, for no hour is sacred to the moon-baying husky and no one may suppress him. One wakes, and lifting his nose, pours out his canine soul in sleep-shattering lament, when, promptly, every husky within hearing takes up the wail.
The post dogs, having alternately and in chorus, to their hearts' content and according to the custom of their fathers, transformed the calm July night into a horror of sound, with noses buried in bushy tails again sought sleep. Once more the mellow light of the moon bathed the sleeping fur-post, when from the stockade behind the Mission rose a long drawn note of grief.
The dark brows of Père Breton, watching beside the delirious Marcel, contracted.
"Could it be?" he queried aloud. Curious, the priest glanced at his patient, then went outside to the stockade. There, with gray nose thrust between the pickets, stood Fleur. As he approached, the dog growled, then sniffing, recognized a friend of the master, who sometimes fed her, and whined.
"What is the matter, Fleur? Do you miss Jean Marcel?"
At the mention of the loved name, the dog lifted her massive head and the deep throat again vibrated with the utterance of her grief for one who had not returned.
"She has waked to find the blanket of Jean Marcel empty," mused the priest, "and mourns for him." Père Breton returned to his vigil beside the wounded man.
When the early dawn flushed the east, the grieving Fleur was still at her post at the stockade gate awaiting the return of Jean Marcel. And not until the sun lifted above the blue hills of the valley of the Whale, did she cease her lament to seek her complaining puppies.
At daylight McCain and Jules coming to relieve the weary priest found Julie sitting with him. The wound was a long slashing one, but the lungs of Marcel seemed to have escaped. The fever wouldrun its course. There was little to do but wait, and hope against infection.
Greeting Julie, whose dark eyes betrayed a lack of sleep, whose face reflected an agony of anxiety, the men called Père Breton outside the Mission.
"The Lelacs will not go south for trial, Father," said McCain, drily.
"What do you mean? Won't go south; why not?" demanded the astonished priest.
"Well, because there's no need of it now," went on McCain mysteriously.
"No need of it! I don't understand. They have done enough harm here. If they don't go, the Crees will do something——"
"The Creeshavedone something," interrupted McCain.
"You don't mean——" queried the priest, light slowly dawning upon him.
"Yes, just that. They overpowered and bound the guard, last night, and—well, they made a good job of it!"
"Killed the prisoners?" the priest slowly shook his head.
McCain nodded. "We found them both knifed in the heart. On the old man was a piece of birch-bark, with the words: 'This work done by friends of Jean Marcel.'"
The priest raised his hands. "It would havebeen better to send them south. Still, they were evil men, and deserved their fate. Tell nothing of it to Julie. She has taken this thing very hard."