Shortly, fresh rabbit tracks became rare. After years of plenty, the days of lean hunting for lynx and fox had returned. The plague, which periodically sweeps the north, would bring starvation, as well, to many a tepee of the improvident children of the snows.

CHAPTER XIII

POOR FLEUR

As the weeks went by, the food cache at the camp on the Ghost steadily shrank. The nets under the ice and the set-lines were now bringing no fish. More and more Jean slept in his half-way camp ten miles north, for although the short rations he fed Fleur had been obtained solely by his own efforts, Joe and Antoine objected to the well-nourished look of the puppy while they grew thin and slowly weakened. But, for generations, the huskies have been accustomed to starvation, and if not slaving with the sleds, will for weeks show but slight effect from short rations.

Besides, Fleur had, from necessity and instinct, become a hunter, and many a ptarmigan and stray rabbit she picked up foraging for herself.

To increase the difficulty of hunting for food, January had brought blizzard after blizzard, piling deep with drifts the trails to their trap-lines, which they still visited regularly, for the starved lynxes were coming to the bait of the flesh of their kin in greater and greater numbers. Twice, seeking the return of the caribou, the desperate men travelled far into the barrens beaten by the withering January winds, returning with wind-burned, frost-blackened faces, for no man may face for long the needle-pointed scourge of the midwinter northers off the Straits.

Finally, in desperation, when the flour was gone, and the food cache held barely enough meat and fish for two weeks, Joe and Antoine insisted that, while they had food to carry them through, they make for the post.

"You can crawl into de post lak a starving Cree because you were too lazy to net feesh. I will stay in de bush with my dog," was Jean's scornful reply.

But the situation was desperate. With two months remaining before the big thaw in April, when they could rely on plenty of fish, there seemed but one alternative, unless the caribou returned or the fish began to move. A few trout and an occasional rabbit and ptarmigan would not keep them alive until the "break-up," when the bear would leave their "washes" and the caribou start north. Already with revolting stomachs they had begun to eat starved lynx. If only they could get beaver, but there were no beaver on the Ghost. It was clear that they must find game shortly or retreat to Whale River.

One night Jean reached his fish cache on his return from a three days'

hunt toward the Salmon waters. At last he had found beaver, and caching two at his tent, with his heart high with hope, was bringing the carca.s.ses of three more to his partners. As he approached the cache in the gathering dusk, to his surprise he found the fresh tracks of snow-shoes.

"Ah-hah!" he muttered, his mouth twisted in a grim smile, "so dey rob de cache of Jean Marcel while he travel sixty mile to get dem beaver!"

The last of Fleur's pitiful little store of fish was gone. The cache was stripped.

Jean shook his head sadly. So he could no longer trust these men whose hunger had made them thieves, he mused. Well, he would break with them at once. "Poor Fleur!" He patted the sniffing nose of his dog.

Bitter with the discovery, Marcel drove Fleur over the trail to the camp. Opening the slab-door he surprised the half-breeds gorging themselves from a steaming kettle of trout. But hunger had driven them past all sense of shame. Looking up sullenly, they waited for him to speak.

"Bon soir, my friends! I see you have had luck at de lines," he surprised them with. "I have three nice fat beaver for you."

The hollow eyes of Joe and Antoine met in a questioning look. Then Piquet brazened it out.

"Beaver, eh? Dat soun' good, fat beaver!" and he smacked his thin lips greedily.

"W'ere you get beaver, Jean?" asked Antoine, now that the tension due to Jean's appearance had relaxed.

"W'ere I tell you I would fin' dem, nord, een de valley of de spirits,"

he laughed.

Marcel heaped a tin dish from the kettle, and slipping outside, fed Fleur.

"Here, Fleur!" he called, "ees some of feesh dat Joe has boiled for you.

Wat, you lak' eet bettair raw? Well, Joe he lak' eet boiled."

Returning, Jean ate heartily of the lake trout. When he had finished and lighted his pipe, he said: "You weel fin' de beaver on de cache. I leeve een de morning for Salmon riviere country."

"W'at, you goin' leave us, Jean?" cried Antoine visibly disturbed.

"Oui, I don't trap wid t'ief!" The cold eyes of Marcel bored into those of Beaulieu which wavered and fell. But Piquet accepted the challenge.

"W'at you t'ink, Jean Marcel, you geeve dose feesh to de dog w'en we starve?" he sullenly demanded. "We eat de dog, also, before we starve."

"You eat de dog, eh, Joe Piquet? Dat ees good joke. You 'av' to keel de dog and Jean Marcel first, my frien'," sneered Marcel. "I net feesh for my dog and you not help me but laugh; now you tak' dem from my dog.

Bien! I am tru wid you both! I geeve you de beaver and bid you, bon jour, to-morrow!"

Antoine was worried, for he knew too well what the loss of Marcel would mean to them in the days to come. But the sullen Piquet in whom toil and starvation were bringing to the surface traits common to the half-breed, treated Marcel's going with seeming indifference.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MARK OF THE BREED

Deep in the night, Marcel waked cold. Lifting his head from the blankets, his face met an icy draft driving through the open door of the shack which framed a patch of sky swarming with frozen stars.

Wondering why the door was open, he rose to close it, when the starlight fell on Piquet's empty bunk.

"Ah-hah! Joe he steal some more, maybe!" he muttered, hastily drawing on his moccasins.

Then stepping into the thongs of his snow-shoes which stood in the snow beside the door, he hurried to the cache.

Beneath the food scaffold crouched a dark form.

"So you steal my share of de meat and hide eet, before I go, eh? You t'ief!"

Caught in the act, Piquet rose from the provision bags as Marcel reached him, to take full in the face a blow backed by the concentrated fury of the Frenchman. Reeling back against a spruce support to the cache, the dazed half-breed sank to his snow-shoes, then, slowly struggling to his knees, lunged wildly with his knife at the man sneering down at him.

Missing, Piquet's thrust carried him head-first into the snow, his arms buried to the shoulders. In a flash, Marcel fell on the prostrate breed with his full weight, driving both knees hard into Piquet's back. With a smothered grunt the half-breed lay limp in the snow.

"Get up, Antoine!" called Marcel, returning to the shack with Fleur, who had left her bed under a spruce, "you fin' a cache-robber, widout fur on heem, out dere. I tak' my grub an' go."

"W'ere ees Joe?" asked the confused Beaulieu, rubbing his eyes.

"Joe, he got w'at t'ieves deserve. Go an' see."

Antoine appeared shortly, followed by the muttering Piquet.

"Ah, bo'-jo', M'sieu Carcajou! You have wake up," Jean jeered.

One of Piquet's beady eyes was swollen shut, but the other snapped evilly as he limped to his bunk.

Taking his share of the food, Marcel loaded his sled, hitched Fleur, then looked into the shack, where he found the two men arguing excitedly.

"A'voir, Antoine! Better hide your grub or M'sieu Wolverine weel steal eet w'ile you sleep."