Could it be, he wondered, could it be the deer at last? No, only a starving wolf or lynx, prowling near the camp, likely. But still he would go! The love of life was yet strong in Jean Marcel now that a gleam of hope warmed his heart.
Slipping his toes into the thongs of his snow-shoes, he made Fleur fast to a tree, and started. He was so weak from lack of food that often he was forced to stop in the climb, shaken by his hammering heart. At last, exhausted, he dragged himself to the shoulder of the barren and on unsteady legs moved along the edge of the scrub, his eyes straining to pierce the wall of dusk which shut the plateau from his sight. But the shadows still blanketed the barren; so testing the light wind, that he might move directly out toward the game when the light grew stronger, he sat down to save his strength for the stalk. Only too clearly, his weakness warned him that it was his last hunt. By another day, even though he managed the climb, his trembling hands would prevent the lining of his sights on game.
As opal and rose faintly streaked the east, the teeth of the hunter, waiting to read the fate daylight would disclose, chattered in the stinging air. But a s.p.a.ce now, and he would know whether he were to creep back to his blankets and wait for stark despair to steady the hand which would bring swift release for Fleur and himself, or whether meat, food, life, were sc.r.a.ping with round-toed hooves the snow from the caribou moss out there in the dim dawn.
Daylight filtered over the floor of snow to meet Marcel lying at the top of a rise out on the barren, waiting. As the light at length opened up the treeless miles, a sob shook the lean frame of the hunter. Tears welled in the deep-set eyes to course down and freeze upon his face, for there, on the snow before him, were the _blue-gray shapes of caribou_.
Three deer were feeding almost within range while farther out, gray patches, moving on the snow, marked other bands. At last the spring migration had reached him, and barely in time. He would see Whale River again when June came north. And Fleur, fretting back there in camp at his absence, after the lean days would revel and grow gigantic on deer meat.
Painfully Marcel crawled within easy range of the nearest caribou. As he attempted to line his sights in order to hit two with the first shot, as he had often done, the waving of his gun barrel in his trembling hands swept him cold with fear. The exertion of crawling to his position had cruelly shaken his nerves. So he rested.
Then he carefully took aim. As he fired, his heart skipped a beat, for he thought he had missed. But to his joy a caribou bounded from the snow, ran a few feet and fell, while another, stopping to scent the air before circling up-wind, gave him a second shot. The deer was badly hit and the next shot brought it down.
The tension of the crisis pa.s.sed, the shattered nerves relaxed, and for a s.p.a.ce the starving hunter lay limp in the snow. But warned by his rapidly numbing fingers, he forced himself to his feet and went to the deer. Out on the barren beyond the sound of his rifle scattered bands of caribou were feeding. Meat to take them through the big "break-up" of April was at hand. The lean face of Jean Marcel twisted into a grim smile.
_He had beaten the long snows._
Stopping only to take the tongues and a piece of haunch, Marcel returned to his hungry dog. Frantic with the faint scent of caribou brought by the breeze off the barren, the famished Fleur chafed and fretted for his return.
"Here, Fleur, see what Jean Marcel got for you!"
The husky, maddened by the scent of the blood-red meat, plunged at her leash, her jaws dripping with slaver. Throwing her a chunk of frozen haunch which she bolted greedily, Marcel filled his kettle with snow and putting in a tongue and strips of steak to boil, lay down by his fire.
CHAPTER XVIII
SPRING AND FLEUR
At intervals during the day Jean drank the strengthening broth, too "bush-wise" to sicken himself by gorging. By late afternoon he was able to drive the rejuvenated Fleur to the barren and bring back the meat on the sled. The days following were busy ones. At first his weakness forced him to husband his strength while the stew and roasted red meat were thickening his blood, but as the food began to tell, he was able to hunt farther and farther into the barrens where the main migration of the caribou was pa.s.sing. When he was strong enough, he took Fleur with a load of meat back to his old winter camp, returning with traps. These he set at the carca.s.ses he had shot, for foxes, lynxes and wolverines were drawn from the four winds to his kill. So while he hunted meat to carry him through April, and home, at the same time he added materially to his fur-pack.
Toward the end of March, before the first thaws softened his back trail and made sled-travel heart-breaking for Fleur, Jean began relaying west the meat he had shot. He had now, cached in the barrens, ample food to supply Fleur and himself until the opening of the waterways when fish would be a most welcome change. His sledding over, he returned to his camp in the barrens to get his traps and take one last hunt, for the lean weeks of the winter had made him over-cautious and he wished to make the trip back with a loaded sled.
By the coming of April, Fleur, in whom an abundance of red caribou meat had swiftly worked a metamorphosis, had increased in bone and weight. As Jean watched her throw her heavy shoulders into her collar and trot lightly off over the hard trail with a two hundred pound load his heart leaped with love of the beautiful beast who worshipped him with every red drop in her s.h.a.ggy body. What a team she would give him some day! he thought. There would be nothing like them south of Hudson"s Straits. And the Company would need them for the winter mail packet, with Jean Marcel to drive them.
Lately he had noticed a new trait in his dog. Several times, deep in the night when he waked to renew the fire, he had found that Fleur was not sleeping near him but had wandered off into the "bush." As she needed no food, he thought these night hunts of the husky peculiar. But at dawn, he always found Fleur back in camp sleeping beside him.
It was Marcel"s last night in the barren-ground camp. Leaving Fleur, he had, as usual, hunted all day, returning with a sled load of meat which he drew himself. As he approached the camp he crossed the trail of a huge timber wolf and hurried to learn if his dog had been attacked, for tied as she was, she would fight with a cruel handicap. But Fleur greeted him as usual with yelps of delight. In the vicinity of the camp there were no tracks to show that the wolf had approached the husky.
However, Marcel decided that he would not leave her again bound in camp unable to chew through the rawhide thongs in time to protect herself from sudden attacks of the wolves which roamed the country.
After supper man and dog sat by the fire, but Fleur was manifestly restless. Time and again she left his side to take long sniffs of the air. Not even the rubbing of her ears which usually brought grunts of pleasure had the magic to hold her long.
The early moon hung on the white brow of a distant ridge, and Jean, finishing his pipe, was about to renew his fire and roll into his blankets, when a long, wailing howl floated across the valley.
Fleur bounded to her feet, her quivering nostrils sucking in the keen air. Again the call of the timber wolf drifted out on the silent night.
Fleur, alive with excitement, trotted into the "bush." In a moment she returned to the fire, whimpering. Then sitting down, she pointed her nose at the stars and her deep throat swelled with the long-drawn howl of the husky. Shortly, when the timber wolf replied, the lips of Fleur did not lift from her white fangs in a snarl nor did her thick mane rise as her ears p.r.i.c.ked eagerly forward.
At dawn Jean waked with a sense of loneliness. Pushing together the embers of his fire, he put on fresh wood, and not seeing Fleur, called to her but she did not appear. She had a habit of prowling around the neighboring "bush" at dawn, inspecting fresh tracks of mice, searching for ptarmigan or for the snow-shoe rabbits that were not there. But when Marcel"s breakfast was cooked Fleur was still absent. Thinking that a fresh game trail had led her some distance, he ate, then started to break camp. Finally he put his index and middle fingers between his teeth and blew the piercing whistle which had never failed to bring her leaping home. Intently, he listened for her answer somewhere in the valley of the stream or on the edge of the barren, but the yelp of his dog did not come to his straining ears.
Curious as to the cause of her absence Jean smoked his pipe and waited.
He was anxious to start back with his traps and meat; but where was Fleur? Becoming alarmed by the middle of the morning, he made a wide circle of the camp hoping to pick up her trail. Two days previous there had been a flurry of snow sufficient to enable him to follow her tracks on the stiff crust. In the vicinity of the camp were traces of Fleur"s recent footprints but finally, at a distance, Marcel ran into a fresh trail leading down into the brook-bottom. There he lost it, and after hours of search returned to camp to wait for her return. But the day wore away and the husky did not appear. Night came and visions of his dog lying somewhere stiff in the snow slashed and torn by wolves, tortured his thoughts. If only he could pick up her trail at daylight, he thought, for she might still live, crippled, unable to come to him, waiting for Jean Marcel who had never failed her.
As he sat brooding by his fire, he came to realize, now that he had lost her, what a part of him the dog had become. His thoughts drifted back over their life together, months of gruelling toil and--delight. Tears traced their way down the wind-burned cheeks of Marcel as he recalled her early puppy ways and antics, how she had loved to nibble with her sharp milk teeth at his moccasins and sit in the bow of the canoe, on their way down the coast, scolding at the seals and ducks; with what mad delight she had welcomed his visits to the stockade at Whale River circling him at full speed, until breathless and panting, she leaped upon him, her hot tongue seeking his hands and face. Then on the long trail home from the south coast marshes, how closely she would snuggle to his back as they lay on the beaches, as if fearing to lose him while she slept. And the winter on the Ghost, with its ghastly end--what a rock his dog had been when his partners failed him! In the moment of his peril, how savagely she had battled for Jean Marcel! Through the lean weeks of starvation when hope had died, to the dawn when she had waked him at the coming of the caribou, his thoughts led him. And now, when spring and Whale River were near, it was all over. Their life together with its promise of the future had been snapped short off. He should never again look into the slant, brown eyes of Fleur. He had lost his all; first Julie, and now, Fleur. There was nothing left.
At daybreak, without hope, he took up the search along the stream. Where the wind had driven, the crust now stiff with alternate freezing and thawing and swept clean of snow, would show little sign of the pa.s.sing of the dog, but in the sheltered areas where the crust was softer and the young snow lay, he hoped to cross the tracks of Fleur. At length, miles from the camp, he picked up the trail of the dog in some light drift. Following the tracks across the brook-bottom and into the scrub of the opposite slope, he suddenly stopped, wide-eyed with amazement at the evidence written plainly in the light covering of the crust. Fleur"s tracks had been joined by, and ran side by side with, the trail of a wolf.
"By Gar!" gasped the surprised Frenchman. "She do not fight wid de wolf!"
As he travelled, he found no marks of battle in the snow, simply the parallel trails of the two, dog and wolf, now trotting, now lengthening out into the long, wolf lope.
"Fleur leave Jean Marcel for de wolf!" the trapper rubbed his eyes as though suspicious of a trick of vision. His Fleur, whom he loved as his life and who adored Jean Marcel, to desert him this way in the night--and for a timber wolf.
It was strange indeed. Yet he had heard of such things. It was this way that the Esquimos kept up the marvellous strain to which Fleur belonged.
He recalled the peculiar actions of the dog during the previous days--the wolf tracks near the camp; her excitement of the night before when the call had sounded over the valley. This wolf had been d.o.g.g.i.ng their trail for a week and Fleur had known it.
"Ah!" he murmured, nodding his head. "Eet ees de spreeng!"
Yes, the spring was slowly creeping north and the creatures of the forest had already answered its call. It was April, and Fleur, too, had succ.u.mbed to an urge stronger for the moment than the love of the master. April, the Crees" "Moon of the Breaking of the Snow-Shoes,"
when, at last, the wind would begin to shift to the south and the nights lose their edge, only to shift back again, with frost. Then the snow would melt hard at noon, softening the trails, and later on, rain and sleet would drive in from the great Bay turning the white floor of the forest to slush, flooding the ice of the rivers which later would break up and move out, overrunning the sh.e.l.l of pond and lake which late in May would honeycomb and disappear.
Marcel followed the trails of wolf and dog until he lost them on the wind-packed snow of the barren. There was nothing to do but wait. He knew his dog had not forgotten him--would come home; but when? It was high time for his return to the camp in the Salmon country, to his precious cache of meat, which would attract lynxes and wolverines for miles around. The bears would soon leave their "washes" and the uprights of his cache were not proof against bear. But he would not go without Fleur, and she was away, somewhere in the hills.
Three days he waited, continuing to hunt that he might take a full sled-load back to his cache. But the weather was softening and any day now might mean the start of the big "break-up." It was deep in the third night that a great gray shape burst out of the forest and pounced upon the m.u.f.fled figure under the shed-tent by the fire. As the dog pawed at the blanketed shape, Marcel, drugged with sleep and bewildered by the attack, was groping for his knife, when a familiar whine and the licks of a warm tongue proclaimed the return of Fleur, and the man threw his arms around his dog.
"Fleur come back to Jean?" Breaking from him, in sheer delight, the dog repeatedly circled the fire, then rearing on her hind legs put her fore-paws on his chest.
"Fleur bad dog to run away wid de wolf!" Marcel seized her by the jowls and shook the ma.s.sive head, peering into the slant eyes in the dim starlight. And Fleur, as though ashamed of her desertion of the master, pushed her nose under his arm, the rumbling in her throat voicing her joy to be with him again. Then Marcel gave her meat from the cache which she bolted greedily.
It had not entered his mind once he had found her tracks that Fleur would not return to him, but during her long absence the condition of the snow had been a source of worry. Each day"s delay meant the chance of the bottom suddenly falling out of the trail before he could freight his load of meat and traps back to his old camp far to the west. Once the big thaw was on, all sledding would be over. So, hurriedly eating his breakfast, he started under the stars, for at noon he would be held up by the softening trail. Toward mid-afternoon, when it turned colder, he would again travel.
Back at his old camp, Marcel found that the fish-hook necklace with which he had circled each of the peeled spruce uprights of his cache had baffled the wolverines and lynxes lured for miles by the odor of meat.
Resetting short trap-lines, he waited for the "break-up" with tranquil mind, for his cache groaned with meat.
CHAPTER XIX
WHEN THE ICE GOES SOFT
The snows were fading fast before the rain and sleet of the big thaw.
Often, at night, the softening winds shifted, to drive in raw from the north, again tightening the land with frost. But each day, as May neared, the sun swung higher and higher, slowly scattering the snow to flood the ice of myriad lakes and rivers. Already, Marcel had thrilled to the trumpets of the gray vanguards of the Canadas. On fair days the sun flashed from white fleets of "wavies," bound through seas of April skies to far Arctic ports.
With May the buds of birch and poplar began to swell, later to light with the soft green of their young leaves the sombre reaches of upland jack-pine and spruce. r.i.m.m.i.n.g the rivers with red, the new shoots of the willows appeared. At dawn, now, from dripping spires, white-throats and hermit thrush, fleeter than the spring, startled the drowsing forest with a reveille of song.
One afternoon in May on his return from picking up a line of traps to be cached for use the following winter, Marcel went to the neighboring pond to lift his net. For safety on the rapidly sponging ice he wore his snow-shoes and carried a twelve-foot spruce pole. He had reset the net and was lashing an anchor line to a stake when suddenly the honeycombed sh.e.l.l crumbled beneath his feet.