With an oath, Piquet was on his feet with his knife, but Beaulieu hurled him back on his bunk and held him, as he cursed the man who stood coolly in the doorway, sneering at the helpless breed blocked in his attempt at revenge.

"A'voir, Antoine!" Jean repeated, as the troubled face of Beaulieu turned to the old partner he respected, "don' let de carcajou keel you for de grub." And ignoring the proffered hand of the hunter who followed him out to the sled, took the trail north.

As dawn broke blue over the bald ridges to the east, Marcel raised his set-lines and net at the lake and pushed on toward the silent hills of the Salmon headwaters.

CHAPTER XV

FOR LOVE OF A MAN

It had been with the feeling of a heavy load loosed from his shoulders that the Frenchman left the Ghost. Disgusted with the laziness and lack of foresight of his partners in the autumn; through the strain and worry of the winter he had gradually lost all confidence in their capacity to fight through until spring brought back the fishing; and now this robbery of his cache and the affair with Piquet had made him a free man.

For Antoine, the friend of his youth, ever easily led but at heart, honest enough, he held only feelings of disgust; but with the crooked-souled Piquet, henceforth it should be war to the knife. Knowing that there were more beaver in the white valleys of the Salmon country, Marcel faced with hope the March crust and the long weeks of the April thaws, when rotting ice would bar the waterways and soggy snow, the trails, to all travel. Somehow, he and Fleur would pull through and see Julie Breton and Whale River again. Somehow, they would live, but it meant a dogged will and day after day, many a white mile of drudgery for himself and the dog he loved. Crawl starved and beaten into Whale River--caught like a mink in a trap by the pinch of the pitiless snows--no Marcel ever did, and he would not be the first.

The February dusk hung in the spruce surrounding the half-way camp of Marcel beside a pond in the hills dividing the watershed of the Ghost from the Salmon. For three days Jean had been picking up his traps preparatory to making the break north to the beaver country. With a light load, for Fleur could not haul much over her weight on a freshly broken trail in the soft snow, the toboggan-sled stood before the tent ready for an early start under the stars. From the smoke-hole of the small tepee the sign of cooking rose straight into the biting air, for there was no wind. But the half-ration of trout and beaver which was simmering in the kettle would leave the clamoring stomach of the man unsatisfied. With the three beaver he had brought from the north and the fish and caribou from the Ghost, Marcel still had food for himself and his dog for a fortnight, but he was not an Indian and was husbanding his scanty store. Fleur had already bolted her fish, more supper than her master allowed himself, for Fleur was still growing fast and her need was greater.

Disliking the smoke from the fire which often filled the tepee, Fleur slept outside under the low branches of a fir, and when it snowed, waked warm beneath a white blanket. For, enured to the cold, the husky knows no winter shelter and needs none, sleeping curled, nose in bushy tail, in a hole dug in the snow, through the bitter nights without frost bite.

As the dusk slowly blanketed the forest, here and there stars p.r.i.c.ked out of the dark canopy of sky to light gradually the white hills rolling away north to the dread valleys of the forbidden land of the Crees.

Later, as the night deepened, the Milky Way drew its trail across the swarming stars. In the pinch of the strengthening cold, spruce and jack-pine snapped in the encircling forest, while the ice of lake and river, contracting, boomed intermittently, like the shot of distant artillery.

On the northern horizon, the camp-fires of the giants flickered and glowed, fitfully; then, at length, loosing their bonds, snake-like ribbons of light writhed and twisted from the sky-line to the high heavens, in grotesque traceries; and across the white wastes of the polar stage swept the eerie "Dance of the Spirits."

For a s.p.a.ce Jean stood outside the tepee watching the never-ceasing wonder of the aurora; then sending Fleur to her bed, sought his blankets. But no sting of freezing air might keep the furred and feathered marauders of the night from their hunting; for faintly on the tense silence floated the "hoo-hoo!" of the snowy owl, patrolling the haunts of the wood-mice. Out of the murk of a cedar swamp rose the scream of a starving lynx. Presently, over star-lit ridges drifted the call of a mating timber wolf.

The Northern Lights had dimmed and faded. Sentinel stars alone guarded the white solitudes, when, from the gloom of the spruce out into the lighted snow moved a dark shape. Noiselessly the m.u.f.fled racquettes of the skulker advanced. As the figure crept nearer the tent, it suddenly stopped, frozen into rigidity, head forward, as though listening. After a s.p.a.ce, it stirred again. Something held in the hands glinted in the starlight, like steel. It was the action of a rifle, made bright by wear.

When the creeping shape reached the banking of the tepee, again it stopped, stiff as a spruce. The seconds lengthened into minutes. Then a hand reached out to the canvas. In the hand was a knife. Slowly the keen edge sawed at the frozen fabric. At last the tent was slit.

Leaning forward the hunter of sleeping men enlarged the opening and pressed his face to the rent. Long he gazed into the darkened tepee.

Then withdrawing his hooded head, he shook it slowly as if in doubt.

Finally, as though decided on his course, he thrust the barrel of his rifle through the opening and dropped his head as if to aim; when, from the rear a gray shape catapulted into his back, flattening him on the snow. As the weight of the dog struck the crouching a.s.sa.s.sin, his rifle exploded inside the tent, followed by a scream of terror.

Again and again the long fangs of the husky slashed at the throat of the writhing thing in the snow. Again and again the ma.s.sive jaws snapped and tore, first the capote, then the exposed neck, to ribbons. Then with c.o.c.ked rifle the dazed Marcel, waked by the gun fired in his ears, reached them.

With difficulty dragging his dog from the crumpled shape, Marcel looked, and from the bloodied face grimacing horribly in death above the mangled throat, stared the glazed eyes of Joe Piquet.

"By Gar! You travel far for de grub and de _revanche_, Joe Piquet," he exclaimed. Turning to the dog, snarling with hate of the prowling thing she had destroyed, Jean led her away.

"Fleur, ma pet.i.te!" he cried, "she took good care of Jean Marcel while he sleep. Piquet, he thought he keel us both in de tent. He nevaire see Fleur under de fir." The great dog trembling with the heat of battle, her mane stiff, yelped excitedly. "She love Jean Marcel, my Fleur; and what a strength she has!" Rearing, Fleur placed her ma.s.sive fore-paws on Marcel's chest, whining up into his face; then seizing a hand in her jaws, proudly drew him back to the dead man in the snow. There, raising her head, as if in warning to all enemies of her master, she sent out over the white hills the challenging howl of the husky.

When Jean Marcel had buried the frozen body of Joe Piquet in a drift over the ridge, where the April thaws would betray him to the mercy of his kind, the forest creatures of tooth and beak and claw, he started back to the Ghost with Fleur, taking Piquet's rifle to be returned to his people with his fur and outfit. Confident that Antoine had had no part in the attempt to kill him and get his provisions, he wished Beaulieu to know Piquet's fate, as Antoine would now in all probability make for Whale River and could carry a message. Furthermore if anything had by chance happened to Beaulieu, Marcel wished to know it before starting north.

As Fleur drew him swiftly over the trail, ice-hard from much travelling, Jean decided that if Antoine wished to fight out the winter in the Salmon country, for the sake of their old friendship he would overlook the half-breed's weakness under Piquet's influence, and offer to take him.

Dawn was wavering in the gray east when Marcel reached the silent camp.

He called loudly to wake the sleeping man inside; but there was no response.

Marcel's heavy eyebrows contracted in a puzzled look.

"Allo, Antoine!" Still no answer. Was he to find here more of the work of Joe Piquet? he wondered, as he swung back the slab-door of the shack and peered into the dim interior.

There in his bunk lay the half-breed.

"Wake up, Antoine!" Marcel cried, approaching the bunk; then the faint light from the open door fell on the gray face of Antoine Beaulieu, stiff in death.

"Tiens!" muttered Marcel. "Stabbed tru de heart w'en he sleep. Joe Piquet, he t'ink to get our feesh and beaver and fur, den he tell dem at Whale Riviere we starve out. Poor Antoine!"

Sick with the discovery, Jean sat beside the dead man, his head in his hands. Bitterly now, he regretted that he had refused the hand of his old friend in parting; that he had not taken him with him when he left the Ghost. It was clear that before starting to stalk Marcel's camp, Piquet had deemed it safer to seal the lips of Beaulieu forever as to the fate of the man he planned to kill.

"Poor Antoine!" Marcel sadly repeated. Outside, Fleur, fretting at the presence of death, whined to be off.

In the cold sunrise, Jean lashed the body of his boyhood friend, which he had sewed in some canvas, on the food cache, that it might rest in peace undefiled by the forest creatures, until on his return in May he might give it decent burial. Beside it he placed the fur-packs, rifles and outfits of the two men.

"Adieu, Antoine!" he called, waving his hand at the shrouded shape on the cache, and turned north.

CHAPTER XVI

THE STARVING MOON

March, the Crees' "Moon of the Crust on the Snow," was old. Camped on a chain of lakes in the Salmon country Marcel had been following the few traps for which he had bait and at the same time hunting widely for food. Soon, the sun, mounting higher and higher each day at noon, would begin to soften the surface of the snow which the freezing nights would harden into crust. Then he could travel far and fast. With much searching he had found another beaver lodge, postponing for a s.p.a.ce the days when man and dog would have not even half rations to stay their hunger. The Frenchman's drawn face and loose capote evidenced the weeks of under-nourishment; but, though Fleur's great bones and the ropes of muscle, banding her back and shoulders, thrust through her s.h.a.ggy coat with undue prominence, still she had as yet suffered little from the famine. So long as Jean Marcel had had fish or meat, his growing puppy had received the greater share, for she had already attained in that winter on the Ghost a height and bulk of bone equal to that of her slate-gray mother now far on the north coast.

For days Jean had been praying for the coming of the crust. With it he planned to make a wide circle back into the high barrens in search of returning caribou. Once the crust had set hard, travelling with the sled into new country would be easy. Food he must acc.u.mulate to take them through the April thaws, or perish miserably, with no one to carry the news of their fate to Whale River. Since the heart-breaking days when the white wolves drove the caribou south and the rabbits disappeared, he had, in moments of depression, sat by the fire at night, wondering, when June again came to Whale River and one by one the canoes of the Crees appeared, if, by chance, a pair of dark eyes would ever turn to the broad surface of the river for the missing craft of Jean Marcel--whether in the joy of her love for another the heart of the girl would sadden for one whose bones whitened in far Ungava hills.

At last the crust came. With eyes shielded by snow goggles made by cutting slits in flat pieces of spruce, for the glare of the sun on the barrens was intense, Jean started with his dog. All the food he had was on his sled. He had burned his bridges, for if he failed in his hunt, they would starve, but as well starve in the barrens, he thought, as back at camp.

They were pa.s.sing through the thick spruce of a sheltered valley, travelling up-wind, when Fleur, sniffing hard, grew excited. There was something ahead, probably fur, so he did not tie his dog. Shortly Fleur started to bolt with the sled and Jean turned her loose. Following his yelping husky, who broke through the new crust at every leap, Marcel entered a patch of cedar scrub. There Fleur distanced him.

Shortly, a scream, followed by a din of snarls and squalls filled the forest. Close ahead a bitter struggle of creatures milling to the death was on. "Tiens!" exclaimed Jean, fearing for the eyes of his raw puppy, battling for the first time with the great cat of the north. He broke through the scrub to see the lynx spring backward from the rush of the dog and leap for the limbs of a low cedar. But the cat was too slow, for at the same instant, Fleur's jaws snapped on his loins, and with a wrench of her powerful neck, the husky threw the animal to the snow with a broken back. In a flash she changed her grip, the long fangs crunching through the neck of the helpless beast, and with a quiver, the lynx was dead.

Hot with the l.u.s.t of battle, Fleur worried the body of her enemy.

Reaching her, Jean proudly patted his dog's back.

"My Fleur! She make de _loup-cervier_ run!" he cried, delighted with the courage and power of his puppy.

Then he anxiously examined the slashes of rapier claws on Fleur's muzzle and shoulders.

"Bon!" he said, relieved. "De lynx he very weak or he cut you deeper dan dese scratch."

As Jean hastily skinned the dead cat he marvelled at its emaciation.

"Ah! He also miss de rabbit. Lucky he starve or you get de beeg scratch, Fleur."