When Wallace and Gillies had surveyed the bodies of the dead half-breeds, the factor turned grimly to his chief.
"Well, Wallace, I don't see how we can send the Lelacs south for trial, now; they wouldn't keep that long."
"Gillies," said the Inspector with a frown, ignoring the ghastly witticism, "I want you to run down the men who did this. Whether they deserved it or not, I won't have men murdered in this district without trial. The lawlessness of the East Coast has got to stop."
Gillies turned away, suppressing with difficulty his anger. Shortly in control of his voice, he answered:
"Mr. Wallace, I have put in many years, boy and man, on this coast and I think I understand the Crees. To punish the men who did this, provided we knew who they were, would be the worst thing the Company could do. When the Lelacs stole Beaulieu's fur and rifle, they put themselves outside the Cree law, and as sure as the sun will set inHudson's Bay to-night, the Lelacs would never have got out of the bush alive this winter."
"I know," objected Wallace, "but to overpower our guards and kill them under our noses——"
"What of it? The Lelacs had robbed a dead man and would have killed Jean Marcel, if he hadn't been a son of André Marcel, who was a wolf in a fight. The Lelacs were three-quarter Cree and the Indians here have a way of meting out justice to their own people in a case like this that even Canadian officials might envy. You may be sure that the Lelacs were formally tried and condemned in some tepee last night before this thing happened."
"These two guards must have been asleep," complained Wallace.
"Well, we'll never know, Mr. Wallace. They say that they were thrown from behind and didn't recognize the men who did it. Even if they did, they wouldn't tell who they were, and it's useless to try to make them. The Crees have taken the Lelacs off our hands. They have saved us time and money by ridding us of these vermin. In my opinion we should thank rather than attempt to punish them."
So Inspector Wallace slowly cooled off and in the afternoon went to the Mission to make his daily call on Julie Breton only to be informed, to his surprise, that she could not see him.
Meanwhile the condition of the wounded man was unchanged, but Père Breton faced a problem which he deemed necessary to discuss with his friends Jules Duroc and McCain.
Throughout the day, Fleur had fretted in the stockade, running back and forth followed by her complaining puppies, thrusting her nose between the pickets to whine and howl by turns, mourning the strange absence of Marcel.
"Fleur will not grant sleep to Whale River to-night, unless something is done," said the priest to the two men who were acting in turn as assistant nurses.
"Why can't we bring her in; let her see him and sniff his hand; it might quiet her?" suggested McCain. "It will only make her worse to shut her up somewhere else."
"By Gar! Who weel tak' dat dog out again?" objected Jules. "Once she here, she nevaire leeve de room."
"Yes, she will, Jules. She'll go back to her pups after a while. We'll bring them outside under the window and let 'em squeal. She'll go back to 'em then."
"I am strong man," said Jules, "but I not love to hold dat dog. She weel eat Jean Marcel, she so glad to see heem, an' we mus' keep her off de bed."
At that moment Julie entered the room. "I willtake Fleur to see him; she will behave for me," volunteered the girl.
So not without serious misgivings, it was arranged that the grieving Fleur should be shown her master.
That night when Julie had fed Fleur, she opened the stockade gate and stroking the great head of the dog, said slowly:
"Fleur would see Jean, Jean Marcel?"
At the sound of the master's name, Fleur's ears went forward, her slant eyes turning here and there for a sight of the familiar figure. Then with a whine she looked at Julie as if for explanation.
"Fleur will see Jean, soon. Will Fleur behave for Julie?"
With a yelp the husky leaped through the gate and ran to and fro outside, sniffing the air; then as if she knew the master were not there, returned, shaggy body trembling, every nerve tense with anticipation, slant eyes eagerly questioning as she whimpered her impatience.
Taking the dog by her plaited collar of caribou hide, to it Julie knotted a rope and led her into the Mission where McCain, Jules and Père Breton waited.
"Fleur will be good and not hurt Jean. She must not leap on his bed. He is very sick."
Seeming to sense that something was about tohappen having to do with Marcel, Fleur met the girl's hand with a swift lick of her tongue. With the rope trailing behind, the end of which Jules and McCain seized to control the dog in case she became unmanageable, Julie Breton opened the door of Marcel's room, where with fever-flushed face the unconscious man lay on a low cot, one arm hanging limply to the floor. When the husky saw the motionless figure, she pricked her ears, thrusting her muzzle forward, and sniffed, and as her nose revealed the glad news that here at last lay the lost Jean Marcel, she raised her head and yelped wildly. Then swiftly muzzling Marcel's inert body she started to spring upon the bunk to wake him, when Julie Breton's arms circled her neck and aided by the drag on the rope, checked her.
"Down, Fleur! No! No! You must not hurt Jean."
Seeming to sense that the mute Marcel was not to be roughly played with, the intelligent dog, whimpering like one of her puppies, caressed the free hand of the sick man, then, ignoring the weight on the rope dragging her back, she strained forward to reach his neck with her tongue, for his head was turned from her. But Jean Marcel did not return her caress.
Puzzled by his indifference, then sensing thatharm had come to the unconscious Marcel, the dog raised her head over the cot and rocked the room with a wail of sorrow.
The wounded man sighed and turning, moaned:
"They took Fleur and now they take Julie. There is nothing left—nothing left!"
At the words, the nose of the overjoyed dog reached the hot face of Marcel, but his eyes did not see her.
Again Julie's strong arms circled Fleur's neck, restraining her. The slant eyes of the husky looked long into the pale face which showed no recognition; then she quietly sat down, resting her nose on his arm. And for hours, with Julie seated beside her, Fleur kept vigil beside the bed, until the priest and McCain insisted on the dog's removal.
When Jules brought a crying puppy outside the window of the sick room, for a time Fleur listened to the call of her offspring without removing her eyes from Marcel's face. But at length, maternal instinct temporarily conquered the desire to watch by the stricken man. Her unweaned puppies depended on her for life and for the moment mother love prevailed. With a final caress of the limp hand of Marcel, reluctantly, with head down and tail dragging, she followed Julie to the stockade.
For days Marcel's youth and strength battled with the fever aggravated by infection in the deep wound. All that Gillies and Père Breton could do for the stricken man was done, but barring the simple remedies which stock the medicine chest of a post in the far north and the most limited knowledge of surgery possessed by the factors, the recovery of a patient depends wholly upon his vitality and constitution. With medical aid beyond reach, men die or fight back to health through the toughness of their fiber alone.
There was a time when Jean Marcel journeyed far toward the dim hills of a land from which there is no trail home for the feet of thevoyageur. There were nights when Julie Breton sat with her brother and Jules, or McCain, stark fear in their hearts that the sun would never again lift above the Whale River hills for Jean Marcel, never again his daring paddle flash in sunlit white-water, or his snow-shoes etch their webbed trail on the white floor of the silent places.
And during these days the impatient Wallace chafed with longing for the society of Julie whose pity for the sick man had made of her an indefatigable nurse. A few words in the morning and an hour or two at night was all the time she allotted the man to whom she had given her heart.
To the demand of the Inspector in the presence of Père Breton that Julie should substitute a Cree woman as nurse, she had replied:
"He has no one but us. His people are dead. He has been like a brother to me. I can do no less than care for him, poor boy!"
"Yes," added Père Breton, "he is as my son. Julie is right," and added, with a smile, "you two will have much time in the future to see each other."
So Wallace had been forced to make the best of it.
By the time that the steamer,Inenew, from Charlton Island, appeared with the English mail, and the supplies and trade-goods for the coming year, Jean Marcel had fought his way back from the frontiers of death. So relieved seemed the girl, who had given lavishly of her young strength, that she allowed Mrs. Gillies to take her place in the sick room while she spent with Wallace the last days of his stay at Whale River.
Once more the post people saw the lovers constantly together and more than one head shook sadly at the thought of the one who had lost, lying hurt, in heart and body, on a cot at the Mission, while another took his place beside Julie Breton.
At last, the steamer sailed for Fort George and no one in the group gathered at the landing doubted that the heart of Julie Breton went with it when they saw the light in her dark eyes as she bade the handsome Wallace good-bye.
It was an open secret now, communicated by Wallace to the factor, that he was to become a Catholic that autumn, and in June take Julie Breton as a bride away to East Main.
During the tense days when the fever heightened and the life of Jean Marcel hung on the turn of a leaf, there had been no repetition of the visit of Fleur to the sick room. But so loudly did she wail her complaint at her enforced absence from the man battling for his life, so near in the Mission house, that it was necessary to confine her with her puppies at a distance.
Once again conscious of his surroundings and rapidly gaining strength, Marcel insisted on seeing his dog. So, daily, under watchful guard, Fleur was taken into the room, often with a clumsy puppy, round and fluffy, who alternately nibbled with needle-pointed milk-teeth at Jean's extendedhand, making a great to-do of snarling in mock anger, or rolled squealing on its back on the floor, while Fleur sprawled contentedly by the cot, tail beating the floor, love in her slant eyes for the master who now had found his voice, whose face once more shone with the old smile, which was her life.
August drew to a close. The post clearing and the beach at Whale River were again bare of tepee and lodge of the hunters of fur who had repaired to their summer camps where fish were plentiful, to wait for the great flights of snowy geese that the first frosts would drive south from Arctic Islands. Daily the vitality and youth of Marcel were giving him back his strength, and no remonstrance of the Bretons availed to keep him quiet once his legs had mastered the distance to the trade-house. Except for a slight pallor in the lean face and the loss of weight, due to confinement, to his friends he was once more the Jean Marcel they had known, but for weeks, a sudden twisting of his firm mouth marking a twinge in the back, recalled only too vividly to them all the knife-thrust of Lelac.
When, rid of the fever, and again conscious, Jean had become strong enough to talk, he repeatedly voiced his gratitude to Julie for her loyalty as nurse, but she invariably covered his mouth with her hand refusing to hear him. Grown strongerand sitting up, he had often repeated his thanks, raising his face to hers with a twinkle in his dark eyes, in the hope that her manner of suppressing him might be continued; but she had tantalizingly refused to humor the convalescent.
"I shall close your mouth no longer, Monsieur," she had said with a grimace. "You will soon be the big, strong Jean Marcel we have always known and must not expect to be a helpless baby forever. And now that you can use your right arm, I shall no longer cut up your fish."
"But it is with great pain that I move my arm, Julie," he had protested in a feeble effort to enlist her sympathy and so prolong the personal ministrations he craved.
"Bah! When before has the great Jean Marcel feared pain? It is only a ruse, Monsieur. I am too busy, now that you can help yourself, to treat you as a child."
And so, reluctantly, Marcel had resigned himself to doing without the aid of the nimble fingers of Julie Breton. The fierce bitterness in his heart, which, before the fight on the beach with the Lelacs had made of the days an endless torment, gave place, on his recovery, to a state of mind more sane. Deep and lasting as was his wound, the realization of the girl's devoted care of him had, during his convalescence, numbed the old rawness. Gratitudeand his innate manhood shamed Marcel into a suppression of his grief and the showing of a brave face to Julie Breton and the little world of Whale River. In his extremity she had stood staunchly by his side. She had been his friend, indeed. He deserved no more. And now in his prayers, for he was a devout believer in the teachings of Père Breton, he asked for her happiness.
One evening found three friends, Julie, Jean Marcel and Fleur, again walking on the shore of the Great Whale in the mellow sunset. Romping with puppy awkwardness, Fleur's progeny roved near them. The hush of an August night was upon the land. Below, the young ebb ran silently without ripple. Not a leaf stirred in the scrub edging the trail. The dead sun, master artist, had limned the heavens with all the varied magic of his palette, and the gray bay, often sullenly restless under low-banked clouds, or blanketed with mist, now reached out, a shimmering floor, to the rim of the world.
In silence the two, mute with the peace of the moment, watched the heightening splendor of the western skies. Disdaining the alluring scents of the neighboring scrub, which her puppies were exploring, Fleur kept to Marcel's side where her nose might find his hand, for she had not forgotten the days of their recent separation.
"What you did for me I can never repay."Marcel broke the silence, his eyes on the White Bear Hills, sapphire blue on southern horizon.
The girl turned impatiently.
"Monsieur Jean Marcel, what I have done, I would do for any friend. I am weary of hearing you speak of it. Have you no eyes for the sunset the good God has given us? Let us speak of that."
He smiled as one smiles at a child.
"Bien!We shall speak no more of it then, Ma'm'selle Breton. But this you shall hear. I am sorry that I acted like a boy about M'sieu Wallace. You will forgive me?"
"There is nothing to forgive," she answered. "I know you were hurt. It was natural for you to feel the way you did."
"But I showed little of the man, Julie. I was hurt here," and he placed his hand on his heart, "and I was a child."
She smiled wistfully, slowly shaking her head. "I fear you were very like a man, Jean. But you are going away and I may not be here in the spring—may not see you for a long time—so I want to tell you now how proud I have been of you this summer."
He looked up quizzically.
"Yes, you have made a great name on the East Coast this summer, Jean Marcel. When you were ill the Crees talked of little else—of your travellingwhere no Indian had dared to go until you found the caribou; your winning, over those terrible Lelacs and proving your innocence; your fighting them with bare hands, because you knew no fear."
The face of Marcel reddened as the girl continued.
"You are brave and you have a great heart and a wise head, Jean Marcel; some day you will be a factor of the Company. Wherever I may be, I shall think of you and always be proud that you are my friend."
Inarticulate, numb with the torture of hopeless love, Marcel listened to Julie Breton's farewell.
When the first flight of snowy geese, southward bound, flashed in an undulating white cloud over Whale River, the canoe of Jean Marcel was loaded with supplies for a winter in the land of the Windigo. And in memory of Antoine Beaulieu, he was taking with him as comrade and partner the eighteen-year-old cousin of the dead man whose kinsmen had humbly made their amends for their stand against Marcel before the hearing. Young Michel Beaulieu, of stouter fibre than Antoine, had at length overcome his scruples against entering the land of dread, through his admiration for Marcel's daring and his confidence in the man whose reputation since the hearing and the fight with the Lelacs had been now firmly established with the Whale River Crees. When Marcel had repeatedly assured the boy that he had neither seen the trail ofMatchi Manito, the devil, nor once heard the wailing of a giant Windigo through all the long snows of the past winter in the Salmon country, Michel's pride at the offer had finally conquered his fears. So leaving the puppy he had given Julie asthe nucleus for a Mission dog-team, and presenting Gillies with another, Marcel packed the three remaining children of Fleur whom he had named in honor of his three staunch friends, Colin, Jules and Angus, into the canoe already deep with supplies, and gripping the hands of those who had assembled on the beach, eased the craft into the flood-tide.
"Good-bye and good luck, Jean!" called Gillies.
"De rabbit weel be few; net beeg cache of feesh before de freeze-up!" urged the practical Jules.
"No fear, Jules. We ketch all de feesh en de lac," laughed Jean. Then his eyes sought Julie Breton's sober face as he said in French:
"I will not come back for Christmas, Julie. The pups will not be old enough for the trail."
With the conviction that he was saying good-bye to Julie Breton forever—that on his return in June, she would be far in the south with Wallace, he pushed off as she called, "Bon voyage, Jean! Dieu vous benisse!" (God bless you!)
When the paddles of Jean and Michel drove the boat into the stream, the whining Fleur, beholding her world moving away from her, plunged into the river after thevoyageurs.
"Go back, Fleur!" ordered Jean sternly. "You travel de shore; de cano' ees too full wid de pup." So the protesting Fleur turned back to follow the shore. The puppies, yet too young and clumsy tokeep abreast of the tide-driven canoe, on the broken beach of the river, had to be freighted.
When the boat was well out in the flood, Marcel waved his cap with a last "A'voir!"
Far up-stream, a half-hour later, rhythmic flashes, growing swiftly fainter and fainter, until they faded from sight, marked for many a long moon the last of Jean Marcel.
September waned, and the laggard rear-guard of the brant and Hutchins geese, riding the first stinging northers, passed south in the wake of the wavies. On the heels of September followed a week of mellow October days lulling the north into temporary forgetfulness of the menace of the bitter months to come. Then the unleashed winds from the Arctic freighted with the first of the long snows beat down the coast and river valleys, locking the land with ice. But far in the Windigo-haunted hills of the forbidden land of the Crees a man and a boy, snug in snow-banked tepee, laughed as the winds whined through November nights and the snow made deep in the timber, for their cache was heaped high with frozen trout, whitefish and caribou.
With the coming of the snow, the puppies, young as they were, soon learned that the life of a husky was not all mad pursuit of rabbit or wood-mouseand stalking of ptarmigan; not all rioting through the "bush," on the trail of some mysterious four-footed forest denizen; not alone the gulping of a supper of toothsome whitefish or trout, followed by a long nap curled in a cosy hole in the snow, gray noses thrust into bushy tails. Although their wolf-blood made them, at first, less amenable than the average husky puppy to the discipline of collar and traces, their great mother, through the force of her example as lead-dog and the swift punishment she meted out to any culprit, contributed as much as Jean's own efforts to the breaking of the puppies to harness.
Jules, the largest, marked like his mother with slate-gray patches on head and back was all dog; but the rogues, Colin and Angus, mottled with the lighter gray of their sire, and with his rangier build, inherited much of his wolf nature. Many a whipping from the long lash of plaited caribou hide, many a sharp nip from Fleur's white teeth, were required to teach the young wolves the manners of camp and trail; to bend their wild wills to the habit of instant obedience to the voice of Jean Marcel. But Fleur was a conscientious mother and under her stern tutelage and the firm but kind treatment of Jean,—who loved to rough and wrestle the puppies in the dry snow, rolling them on their backs and holding them helpless in thegrip of his sinewy hands—as the shaggy ruffians grew in the wisdom of trace and trail, so in their wild natures ripened love for the master who fed and romped with them, meting out punishment to him alone who had sinned.
In search of black and silver foxes, whose pelts, worth in the world of cities their weight in gold, are the chief inspiration of the red hunter's dreams, Jean had run his new trap-lines far in the valleys of the Salmon watershed. But to the increasing satisfaction of the still worried Michel, the sole noises of the night which had yet met his fearful ears, had been the scream of lynx, the occasional caterwauling of wolverine and the hunting chorus of timber wolves. But darkness still held potential terror for the lad in whom, at his mother's knee, had been instilled dread of the demon-infested bad-lands north of the Ghost, and he never camped alone.
January came with its withering winds, burning and cracking the faces of the hunters following their trap-lines; swirling with fine snow, which struck like shot, and stung like the lash of whips. Often when facing the drive of a blizzard even the hardy Fleur, wrinkling her nose with pain, would stop and turn her back on the needle-pointed barrage. At times when the fierce cold, freezing all moisture from the atmosphere, filled the air withpowdery crystals of ice, the true sun, flanked by sun-dogs in a ringed halo, lifted above the shimmering barrens, dazzlingly bright.
One night when Jean and Michel, camped in the timber at the end of the farthest line of fox traps, had turned into their robes before a hot fire, in front of which in a snow hole they had stretched a shed tent both as windbreak and heat-reflector, a low wail, more sob than cry of night prowler, drifted up the valley.
"You hear dat?" whispered Michel.
The hairy throat of Fleur, burrowed in the snow close to the tent, rumbled like distant thunder.
Marcel, already fast drifting into sleep, muttered crossly:
"Eet ees de Windigo come to eat you, Michel."
Again upon the hushed valley under star-encrusted heavens where the borealis flickered and pulsed and streamed in fantastic traceries of fire, broke a wailing sob.
With a cry Michel sat up turning a face gray with fear to the man beside him. Again Fleur growled, her lifted nose sniffing the freezing air, to send her awakened puppies into a chorus of snarls and yelps.
Raised on an elbow, Marcel sleepily asked:
"What de trouble, Michel? You and Fleur hear de Windigo?"
"Listen!" insisted the boy. "I nevaire hear dat soun' before."
Silencing the dog, Jean pushed back his hood to free his ears, smiling into the blanched face of the wild-eyed boy beside him.
Shortly the noiseless night was marred by a sobbing moan, as if some stricken creature writhed under the torture of mangled flesh.
Marcel knew that neither wolf, lynx, nor wolverine—the "Injun-devil" of the superstitious—was responsible for the sound. What could it be? he queried. No furred prowler of the night, and he knew the varied voices of them all, had such a muffled cry. Puzzled and curious he left his rabbit-skin robes and stood with the terrified Michel beside the fire. In an uproar, the dogs ran into the "bush" with manes bristling and bared fangs, to hurl the husky challenge down the valley at the invisible menace.
"Eet ees de Windigo! Dey tell me at Whale Riviere not to come een dees countree! De Windigo an' Matchi Manito ees loose here," whimpered Michel through chattering teeth.
Jean Marcel did not know what it was that made night horrible with its moaning but he intended to learn at once. The lungs behind that noise could be pierced by rifle bullet and the cold steel of his knife. There was not a creature in the north withwhich Fleur would not readily battle. He would soon learn if the hide of a Windigo was tough enough to turn the knife-like fangs of Fleur, and the bullets of his 30-30.
Seizing Michel by the shoulders he shook the boy roughly.
"I tell you, Michel, de devil dat mak' dat soun' travel on four feet. You tie up de pup an' wait here. Fleur an' I go an' breeng back hees skin."
But the panic-stricken Michel would not be left alone, and when he had fastened the excited puppies, with shaking hands he drew his rifle from its skin case and joined Marcel.
Holding with difficulty on her rawhide leash the aroused Fleur leaping ahead in the soft footing, Marcel snow-shoed through the timber in the direction from which the sound had come.
After travelling some time they stopped to listen.
From somewhere ahead, seemingly but a few hundred yards down the valley, floated the eerie sobbing. Michel's gun slipped to the snow from his palsied hands.
Turning, Jean gripped the boy's arm.
"Why you come? You no good to shoot. De Windigo eat you w'ile you hunt for your gun."
Picking up the rifle, the boy threw off the mittens fastened to his sleeve by thongs, and gritting his teeth, followed Marcel and Fleur.
Shortly they stopped again to listen. Straight ahead through the spruce the moaning rose and fell. Fleur, frantic to reach the mysterious enemy, plunged forward dragging Marcel, followed by the quaking boy who held his cocked rifle in readiness for the rush of beast or devil. Passing through scrub, a small clearing opened up before them. Checking Fleur, Marcel peered through the dim light of the forest into the opening lit by the stars, when the clearing echoed with the uncanny sound.
Marcel's keen eyes strained across the star-lit snow into the murk beyond, as Michel gasped in his ears:
"By Gar! I see noding dere! Eet ees de Windigo for sure!"
But the Frenchman was staring fixedly at a clump of spruce on the opposite edge of the opening. As the unearthly sobbing rose again into the night, he loosed the maddened dog and followed.
They were close to the spruce, when a great gray shape suddenly rose from the snow directly in their path. For an instant a pair of pale wings flapped wildly in their faces. Then a squawk of terror was smothered as the fangs of Fleur struck at the feathered shape of a huge snowy owl. A wrench of the dog's powerful neck, and the ghostly hunter of the northern nights had made his last patrol, victim of his own curiosity.
With a loud laugh Jean turned to the dazed Michel:
"Tak' good look at de Windigo, Michel. My fox trap hold heem fas' w'ile he seeng to de star."
The amazed Michel stared at the white demon in the fox trap with open mouth. "I t'ink—dat h'owl—de Windigo for sure," he stuttered.
"I nevaire hear de h'owl cry dat way myself, Michel, but I know dat Fleur and my gun mak' any Windigo een dees countree look whiter dan dat bird. W'en we come near dees place I expect somet'ing een dat fox trap."
And strangely, through the remaining moons of the long snows, the sleep of the lad was not again disturbed by the wailing of Windigos seeking to devour a young half-breed Cree by the name of Michel Beaulieu.
June once again found Marcel paddling into Whale River. The sight of the high-roofed Mission, where, in the past, he had known so much of joy and pain, quickened his stroke. He wondered whether she had gone away with Wallace at Christmas, or whether there would be a wedding when the trade was over and the steamer would take them to East Main. Avoiding the Mission until he had learned from Jules what he so longed to know, Marcel went up to the trade-house where he found Gillies and McCain. Too proud to speak of what was nearest his heart, he told his friends of his winter in the Salmon country. It had paid him well, his long portage from the Ghost, the previous September, to the untrapped valleys to the north. When, unlashing his fur-pack, he tossed on the counter three glossy black-fox pelts and six skins of soft silver-gray, alone worth well over a thousand dollars, even at the low prices of the far north, the eyes of Gillies and Angus McCain bulged inamazement. Cross fox, shading from the black of the back and shoulder to rich mahogany, followed; dark sheeny marten—the Hudson's Bay sable of commerce—and thick gray pelts of the fisher. Otter, lynx and mink made up the balance of the fur.
"Great Scott! the Salmon headwaters must be alive with fur!" exclaimed Gillies examining the skins, "and most of them are prime."
"Dere ees much fur een dat country," laughed Jean, "eef de Windigo don' ketch you, eh, Michel?"
Michel, proud of his part in so successful a winter and in having bearded the demons of the Salmon in their dens and lived to tell the tale, blushed at the memory of the snowy owl.
"This is the largest catch of fur traded in my time at Whale River, Jean," said Gillies. "What are you going to do with all your credit? You can't use it on yourself; you'll have to get married and build a shack here."
Blood darkened the bronzed face, but Marcel made no reply.
He had indeed wrung a handsome toll from the haunted hills, which, tabooed by Cree trappers for generations, were tracked by the padded feet of countless fur-bearers. After allowing Michel a generous interest in the fur, Marcel found that hehad increased his credit at the post by over two thousand dollars, giving him in all a trade credit of twenty-six hundred dollars with the Company. He could in truth afford to marry and build a shack if he were made a Company servant, but the girl——Then he heard Gillies' voice.
"Jean, I want you and Angus to go up to the Komaluk Islands with a York boat. The whalers are getting the Husky trade which we ought to have. They will ruin them with whiskey."
"Ver' well, M'sieu!"
Marcel drew a breath of relief. If she were not already married, he would be only too glad to go north—to be spared seeing Julie Breton made the wife of Wallace. Then, at last, Jules appeared.
After the customary hug, Jean drew the big head man outside, demanding in French:
"Is she here still? They were not married at Christmas? When do they marry?"
Jules shook his head. "A letter came by the Christmas mail. By the Company he was ordered at once to Winnipeg. He is there now and will not come this summer."
"And Julie, is she well?"
"Yes."
"When, then, will they marry?"
Jules shrugged his great shoulders. "Christmas maybe, perhaps next June. No one knows."
Marcel was strangely elated at the news. Julie was not yet out of his life. She would be at Whale River on his return from the north. Even if he were held all summer she would be there as of old.
The welcome of Julie and Père Breton at the Mission temporarily drove from Marcel's thoughts the coming separation. Far into the night the three friends talked while Julie's skillful fingers were busy with her trousseau. She spoke of the postponement of her wedding, due to the presence of Inspector Wallace at the headquarters of the Company at Winnipeg. Julie's olive skin flushed with her pride, as she said that he had been mentioned already as the next Chief Inspector. Wallace had already become a Catholic, but the uncertainty of the time of his return to the East Coast might cause the delay of the ceremony until the following June.
Marcel's hungry eyes did not leave the girl's face as she talked of her future—the future he had dreamed of sharing. But the wound was still raw and he was glad to escape the acute suffering which her nearness caused, by leaving Fleur and her puppies in Julie's care, and starting with McCain the following morning, in a York boat loaded with trade-goods, for the north coast.
In August the York boat returned from theKomaluk Islands and Jean drew his supplies for another winter on Big Salmon waters. To Gillies, who urged him to accept a regular berth, and put his team of half-breed wolves on the mail-route to Rupert, for the winter previous the scarcity of good dogs along the coast had been the cause of the Christmas mail not reaching Whale River until the second of January, Marcel turned a deaf ear. In another year, he said, he would carry the mail up the coast, but his puppies were still too young to be pushed hard through a blizzard. Another year and he would show the posts down the coast what a real dog-team could do.
Glancing at McCain, Gillies shook his head resignedly, for he knew well why Jean Marcel wished to avoid Whale River.
On the morning of his departure, as Jean stood with Michel on the beach by the canoe, surrounded by his four impatient dogs, Julie stooped and kissed the white marking between Fleur's ears, whispering a good-bye. Turning her head in response, the dog's moist nose and rough tongue reached the girl's hand.
"Lucky Fleur!" Jean said to his friends.
"It's sure worth while being a dog, sometimes," drawled Angus McCain with a grimace. But Julie Breton ignored the remarks, wishing Marcel Godspeed.
Through the day as they travelled Marcel looked on the high shores of the Salmon with unseeing eyes, for in them was the vision of a girl bending over a great dog.
Christmas was but a week distant. For the first time in years Jean Marcel possessed a dog-team, and through the long December nights he had come to a decision to talk to Julie Breton once more, as in the old days, before she left Whale River forever.
Led by Fleur, Colin, Angus and Jules, now grown to huge huskies, already abreast of their mother in height and bulk of bone, and showing the wolf strain in their rangy gait and in red lower-lids of their amber eyes, were jingling down the river trail to the festivities at the post. For, from Fort Chimo, west across the wide north, to Rampart House, Christmas and New Years are kept. From far and wide come dog-teams of the red hunters down the frozen river trails for the feasting and merrymaking at the fur-posts. Two weeks, "fourteen sleeps" on the trail, going and coming, is not held by many a hardy hunter and his family too high a price to pay for a few short days of trading and gossip and dancing. There are many who trap too far from the posts and in country too inaccessible to make the journey possible, but throughout the white desolation of the fur lands the spirit of Christmas is strong and yearly the frozen valleys echo to the tinkling of the bells of dog-teams and the laughter of the children of the snows.
Over the beaten river trail, ice-hardened by the passage of many sleds preceding them, romped Fleur and her sons, toying with the weight of the two men and the food bags on the sled. At times, Jean and Michel ran behind the team to stretch their legs and start their chilled blood, for it was forty below zero. But to the dogs, travelling without wind at forty below on a beaten trail, was sheer delight. Often, on the high barrens of the Salmon they had slept soundly in their snow holes at minus sixty.
As Jean watched his great lead-dog, her thick coat of slate-gray and white glossy with superb vitality, set a pace for her rangy sons which sent the white miles sliding swiftly past, his heart sang.
Good all day for a thousand pounds, they were, on a broken trail, and since November he had in vain sought the limit of their staying power. Not yet the equals of their mother in pulling strength, at eighteen months their wolf-blood had already given the puppies her stamina. What a team tobring the Christmas mails up the coast from East Main! he thought, idly whirling the whip of plaited caribou hide which had never flecked the ears of Fleur, but which he sometimes needed when the excitable Colin or Angus scented game and, puppy-like, started to bolt. No dogs on the coast could take the trail from these sons of Fleur. No dog-team he had ever seen could break-out and trot away with a thousand pounds. That winter they had done it with a load of caribou meat on the barrens. Yes, next year he would accept Gillies' offer and put Fleur and her sons on the winter-mail—Fleur, and the team she had given him; his Fleur, whom he had followed and fought for: who had in turn battled for his life.
"Marche, Fleur!" he called, his eyes bright with his thoughts.
The lead-dog leaped from a swinging trot into a long lope, straightening the traces, followed by the team keen for a run. Away they raced in the good going of the hard trail. Then, in early afternoon when the sun hung low in the dim west, the men turned into the thick timber of the shores, where, sheltered from the wind, they shovelled out a camp ground with their snow-shoes and built a roaring fire while the puppies, ravenous for their supper, yelped and fretted until Jean threw them the frozen fish which they caught in the air and bolted.
Before Jean and Michel had boiled their tea and caribou stew, four shaggy shapes with noses in tails were asleep in the snow, indifferent to the sting of the strengthening cold which made the spruces around them snap, and split the river ice with the boom of cannon.
Wrapped in his fur robe before the fire, Marcel lay wondering if he should find Julie Breton still at Whale River.
Hours later, waking with a groan, Marcel sat upright in his blankets. Near him the tired Michel snored peacefully. Throwing a circle of light on the surrounding spruce, huge embers of the fire still burned. The moon was dead, a veil of haze masking the dim stars. It was bitter cold. Half out of his covering, the startledvoyageurshivered, but it was not from the bite of the air. It was the stark poignancy of the dream from which he had escaped, that left him cold.
He had stood by the big chute of the Conjuror's Falls on the Ghost, known as the "Chute of Death," and as he gazed into the boiling maelstrom of white-water, the blanched face of Julie Breton had looked up at him, her lips moving in hopeless appeal, as she was swept from sight.
Into the roaring flume he had plunged headlong, frenziedly seeking her, as he vainly fought down through the gorge, buffeted and mauled by thechurning water, but though he hunted the length of the river below, never found her.
Again, he was travelling with Fleur and the team in a blizzard, when out of the smother of snow before him beckoned the wraith of Julie Breton—always just ahead, always beckoning to him. Pushing his dogs to their utmost he never drew nearer, never reached the wistful face he loved, luring him through the curtain of snow.
Marcel freshened the fire and lighted his pipe. It was long before he threw off the grip of his dreams and slept.