Jean leaped and ran, cracked his caribou whip, and shouted and sang until he was panting and red in the face. Just as Iowaka had called upon him to stop and get a second wind, the Malemutes dropped back upon their haunches where Jan Th.o.r.eau lay, twisted and bleeding, in the snow.
"What is this?" cried Jean.
He caught Jan"s limp head and shoulders up in his arms, and called shrilly to Iowaka, who was disentangling herself from the thick furs in which he had wrapped her.
"It is the fiddler I told you about, who lives with Williams at Post Lac Bain!" he shouted excitedly in Cree. "He has been murdered! He has been choked to death, and torn to pieces in the face, as if by an animal!" Jean"s eyes roved about as Iowaka kneeled beside him. "What a fight!" he gasped. "See the footprints--a big man and a small boy, and the murderer has gone on a sledge!"
"He is warm," said Iowaka. "It may be that he is not dead."
Jean de Gravois sprang to his feet, his little black eyes flashing with a dangerous fire. In a single leap he was at the side of the sledge, throwing off the furs and bundles and all other objects except his rifle.
"He is dead, Iowaka. Look at the purple and black in his face. It is Jean de Gravois who will catch the murderer, and you will stay here and make yourself a camp. Hi-o-o-o-o!" he shouted to the Malemutes.
The team twisted sinuously and swiftly in the trail as he sped over the edge of the mountain. Upon the plain below he knelt upon the toboggan, with his rifle in front of him; and at his low, hissing commands, which reached no farther than the dogs" ears, the team stretched their long bodies in pursuit of the missioner and his huskies.
Jean knew that whoever was ahead of him was not far away, and he laughed and hunched his shoulders when he saw that his magnificent Malemutes were making three times the speed of the huskies. It was a short chase. It led across the narrow plain and into a dense tangle of swamp, where the huskies had picked their way in aimless wandering until they came out in thick balsam and Banksian pine. Half a mile farther on, and the trail broke into an open which led down to the smooth surface of a lake, and two-thirds across the lake was the fleeing missioner.
The Malemute leader flung open his jaws in a deep baying triumph, and with a savage yell Jean cracked his caribou whip over his back. He saw the man ahead of him lean over the end of his sledge as he urged his dogs, but the huskies went no faster; and then he caught the glitter of something that flashed for a moment in the sun.
"Ah!" said Jean softly, as a bullet sang over his head. "He fires at Jean de Gravois!" He dropped his whip, and there was the warm glow of happiness in his little dark face as he leveled his rifle over the backs of his Malemutes. "He fires at Jean de Gravois, and it is Jean who can hamstring a caribou at three hundred yards on the run!"
For an instant, at the crack of his rifle, there was no movement ahead; then something rolled from the sledge and lay doubled up in the snow. A hundred yards beyond it, the huskies stopped in a rabble and turned to look at the approaching strangers.
Beside it Jean stopped; and when he saw the face that stared up at him, he clutched his thin hands in his long black hair and cried out, in shrill amazement and horror:
"The saints in Heaven, it is the missioner from Churchill!"
He turned the man over, and found where his bullet had entered under one arm and come out from under the other. There was no spark of life left. The missioner was already dead.
"The missioner from Churchill!" he gasped again.
He looked up at the warm sun, and kicked the melting snow under his moccasined feet.
"It will thaw very soon," he said to himself, looking again at the dead man, "and then he will go into the lake."
He headed his Malemutes back to the forest. Then he ran out and cut the traces of the exhausted huskies, and with his whip scattered them in freedom over the ice.
"Go to the wolves!" he shouted in Cree. "Hide yourselves from the post, or Jean de Gravois will cut out your tongues and take your skins off alive!"
When he came back to the top of the mountain, Jean found Iowaka making hot coffee, while Jan was bundled up in furs near the fire.
"It is as I said," she called. "He is alive!"
Thus it happened that the return of Jean de Gravois to the post was even more dramatic than he had schemed it to be, for he brought back with him not only a beautiful wife from Churchill, but also the half dead Jan Th.o.r.eau from the scene of battle on the mountain. And in the mystery of it all he reveled for two days; for Jean de Gravois said not a word about the dead man on the lake beyond the forest, nor did the huskies come back into their bondage to give a hint of the missing missionary.
CHAPTER X
RED SNOW-FLOWERS
From the day after the caribou roast the fur-gatherers began scattering. The Eskimos left the next morning. On the second day Mukee"s people from the west set off along the edge of the barrens.
Most of the others left by ones and twos into the wildernesses to the south and east.
Less than a dozen still put off their return to the late spring trapping, and among these were Jean de Gravois and his wife. Jean waited until the third day. Then he went to see Jan. The boy was bolstered up in his cot, with c.u.mmins balancing the little Melisse on the edge of the bed when he came in.
For a time Jean sat and watched them in silence; then he made a sign to c.u.mmins, who joined him at the door.
"I am going the Athabasca way to-day," he said. "I wish to talk with the boy before I go. I have a word to say to him which no ears should hear but his own. Will it be right?"
"Talk to him as long as you like," said c.u.mmins, "but don"t worry him about the missionary. You"ll not get a word from him."
Jan"s eyes spoke with a devotion greater than words as Jean de Gravois came and sat close beside him. He knew that it was Jean who had brought him alive into the post, and now there was something in the suggestive grimacing of the Frenchman"s face, and in the eagerness with which he looked over his shoulder, as if he was not quite sure but that the walls held ears, that caused the boy"s heart to beat a little faster as he speculated upon what Jean was going to say.
For a few moments Jean looked at the other steadily, with his thin, black face propped in his hands and a curious smile on his lips. He twisted his face into a dozen expressions of a language as voluble as that of his tongue, hunched his shoulders up to his ears as he grinned at Jan, and chuckled between his grimaces.
"Ah, it was wan be-e-a-u-tiful fight!" he said softly. "You are a brave boy, Jan Th.o.r.eau!"
"You did not see it?" asked Jan.
Unconsciously the words came from him in French. Jean caught one of his thin hands and laughed joyfully, for the spirit of him was French to the bottom of his soul.
"I see it? No, neither I nor Iowaka; but there it was in the snow, as plain as the eyes in your face. And did I not follow the trail that staggered down the mountain, while Iowaka brought you back to life? And when I came to the lake, did I not see something black out upon it, like a charred log? And when I came to it, was it not the dead body of the missioner from Churchill? Eh, Jan Th.o.r.eau?"
Jan sat up in his bed with a sharp cry.
"Sh-h-h-h-h!" admonished Jean, pressing him back gently. "There is no need of telling what is out there on the lake. Only the Blessed Virgin made me dream last night that you would like to see with your own eyes that the missioner is dead. The thaw will open up the lake in a few days. Then he will go down in the first slush. And"--Jean looked about him cautiously again, and whispered low--"if you see anything about the dead missioner that you do not understand--THINK OF JEAN DE GRAVOIS!"
He rose to his feet and bent over Jan"s white face.
"I am going the Athabasca way to-day," he finished. "Perhaps, Jan Th.o.r.eau, you will hear after a time that it would be best for Jean de Gravois never to return again to this Post Lac Bain. If so, you will find him between Fond du Lac and the Beaver River, and you can make it in four days by driving your dogs close to the scrub-edge of the barrens, keeping always where you can see the musk-ox to the north." He turned to the door, and hesitated there for a moment, smiling and shrugging his shoulders. "Jean de Gravois wonders if Jan Th.o.r.eau understands?" he said, and pa.s.sed out.
When c.u.mmins returned, he found Jan"s cheeks flushed and the boy in a fever.
"Devil take that Gravois!" he growled.
"He has been a brother to me," said Jan simply. "I love him."
On the second day after the Frenchman"s departure, Jan rose free of the fever which had threatened him for a time, and in the afternoon he harnessed c.u.mmins" dogs. The last of the trappers had started from the post that morning, their sledges and dogs sinking heavily in the deepening slush; and Jan set off over the smooth toboggan trail made by the company"s agent in his return to Fort Churchill.
This trail followed close along the base of the ridge upon which he had fought the missionary, joining that of Jean de Gravois miles beyond.
Jan climbed the ridge. From where he had made his attack, he followed the almost obliterated trail of the Frenchman and his Malemutes until he came to the lake; and then he knew that Jean de Gravois had spoken the truth, for he found the missionary with his face half buried in the slush, stark dead.
He no longer had to guess at the meaning of Jean"s words. The bullet-hole under the dead man"s arms was too large to escape eyes like Jan"s. Into the little hidden world which he treasured in his heart there came another face, to remain always with him--the face of the courageous little forest dandy who was hurrying with his bride back into the country of the Athabasca.
Jan allowed his dogs to walk all the way back to the post, and it was dusk before they arrived. Maballa had prepared supper, and c.u.mmins was waiting for him. He glanced sharply at the boy. There was a smile on Jan"s lips, and there was something in his eyes which c.u.mmins had never seen there before. From that night they were no longer filled with the nervous, glittering flashes which at times had given him an appearance almost of madness. In place of their searching suspicions, there was a warmer and more companionable glow, and c.u.mmins felt the effect of the change as he ate his caribou steak and talked once more entirely of Melisse.