For answer the hot tongue of the dog sought his hands as she raised her brown eyes to his. With arms around her s.h.a.ggy 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 most _sauvage_!" 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 a.s.sault 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 which she 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 ma.s.sive 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 a wolverine 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.
c.o.c.king and thrusting his 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 carca.s.ses 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 he had 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 l.u.s.terless. 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 weakness and 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 snuff out--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 pa.s.s 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.
CHAPTER XVII
THE TURN OF THE TIDE
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.