"I lashed Antoine een hees shed-tent and put heem on de cache, for the wolverine and lynx would get heem een de snow." As Marcel talked McCain and Gillies exchanged significant looks.

"Um!" muttered the factor, when Jean had finished. "Something queer here!"

"What, M'sieu?" Marcel demanded.

"Why, Lelac says he found the body of Antoine buried under stones on the sh.o.r.e and that there was nothing on the cache except the empty grub bags."

"Dey say de fur and rifle was not dere?"

"Yes, nothing on the cache!"

"Den I must have de rifle and de fur; ees dat eet?"

"Yes, that's what they insinuate."

"Ah-hah!" Marcel scowled, thinking hard. "Dey say dey fin' noding, so do not turn over to you de rifle and fur-pack."

"Yes, they claim you must have hidden them as you hid the body."

"Den how do dey know Piquet ees dead too?" Marcel's dark features relaxed in a dry smile. It was not, then, solely the desire for vengeance on the murderer of their kin that had prompted the half-breeds to distort the facts.

"They say his extra clothes and his outfit were in the cabin, only his rifle and fur missing. Now, Jean," he continued, "I am perfectly satisfied with your story. I believe every word of it. I knew your father and I know you. The Marcels are not liars. But the Lelacs are going to make trouble over the evidence they found at your camp.

Suspicion always points to the survivor in a starvation camp, and you know the circ.u.mstances are against you, my lad."

"M'sieu," Marcel protested. "Eef I keel Antoine, I would tak' heem into de bush and hide heem, I would not worry ovair de fox and wolverine."

"Of course you would have hidden the body somewhere. We appreciate that.

But as they are trying to put this thing on you they ignore that side of it. What you admit they found,--Antoine's body with a stab wound, and Piquet's outfit, makes it look bad to people who don't know you as we do. They won't believe that the famine got Piquet in the head. They'll say that's a tale you made up to get yourself off."

Marcel went hot with anger. His impulse was to seek the Lelacs and have it out, then and there. But he possessed the cool judgment of a long line of ancestors whose lives had often depended on their heads, so he choked back his rage.

"Now I don't want it carried down the coast that you killed your partners, Jean," went on Gillies. "Young as you are, you'll never live it down. And besides, there's no knowing what the government might do.

I'll have to make a report, you know. So we've got to do some tall thinking between us before the hunters get in."

While the factor talked, the swift brain of Marcel had struck upon a plan to trap and discredit the Lelacs, but he wished to think it over, alone, before proposing it at the trade-house, so held his tongue. When he was ready he would ask the factor to hold a hearing. Then he could put some questions to his accusers that would make them squirm. One question he did ask before packing his fur and outfit from the beach up to the Mission.

"Have de Lelac traded dere fur, M'sieu?"

"No, we haven't started the trade yet."

"W'en dey trade dere fur weel you hold it from de oder fur, separate?"

"Why, yes, I'll do that for you, but you can't hope to identify skins, Jean."

A corner of Marcel's mouth curled in a quizzical smile. "Wait, M'sieu Gillies; I tell you later," and with a "Bon-soir!" he went out.

CHAPTER XXII

IN THE DEPTHS

Although it would have been pure suicide for anyone to attempt to take Fleur from the stockade against her will, Marcel feared that some dark night those who wished his disgrace might loose their venom in an injury to his dog. So, refusing a room in the Mission House, he pitched his tent on the gra.s.s inside the spruce pickets where Fleur might lie beside him.

Here his staunch friend Jules sought Jean out. It seemed that Inspector Wallace had been up the coast at Christmas, had stayed a week, and although no one knew exactly what had transpired, whether he had as yet become a Catholic, there was no doubt in the minds of the curious that the Scotchman would shortly remove the sole obstacle to his marriage to Julie Breton.

With head in hands, Jean Marcel listened to the news, none the less bitter because antic.i.p.ated. The loyal Jules' crude attempt to console the brokenhearted hunter went unheard. Fate had made him its cat's-paw.

Not only had he lost his heart's desire, but his name was now a byword at Whale River; the woman he held dear and his honor, both gone. There was nothing left to lose. He was indeed bankrupt.

During supper, Jean was plied with questions by Julie, who, in his absence, had had his story from her brother. To the half-breeds she never once alluded, seemingly interested solely in the long hunt for caribou on the barrens and in Fleur's rescue of her master from the lake.

For the delicacy of the girl in avoiding the tragedy which was plainly claiming his thoughts, he was deeply grateful. Clearly from the first, she had believed in the honor of Jean Marcel. But with what was evidently a forced gaiety, the girl sought, on the night of his return, to banish from his mind thoughts of the cloud blackening the future--of the trying days ahead.

"Come, Jean Marcel," she laughed, speaking to him, as always, in French, "are you not glad to see us that you wear a face so dismal? You have not told me how you like this muslin gown." She pirouetted on her shapely moccasined feet challenging his approval. "Henri says I'm growing thin.

Is it not becoming? No? Then I shall eat and grow as fat as big Marie, the Montagnais cook at the Gillies'."

The sober face of Jean Marcel lighted at her pleasantry. His brooding eyes softened as they followed the trim figure in the simple muslin gown. It was a rare picture indeed for a man who had but just finished seven months in the "bush," half the time with the spectre of starvation haunting his heels--this girl with the dusky eyes and hair, the vivid memory of whose face he had carried with him into the nameless barrens.

But she belonged to another and he, Jean Marcel, was branded as a murderer at Whale River, even if he escaped the law.

Presently, when Pere Breton was called from the room to minister to a Cree convert, Julie became serious.

"Jean Marcel, I have much to say to you; but it is hard--to begin."

"I should think you would have little to say to Jean Marcel."

"Why, because some half-breeds have brought a story to Whale River which was not true?"

"Well, enough of it is true, Julie, to make the Indians believe, when they hear it, that Jean Marcel killed his partners to save himself from starvation."

"Not if Pere Breton and Monsieur Gillies have any influence with the Crees. They will not allow them to believe such a cruel falsehood,"

protested Julie, vehemently.

Marcel smiled indulgently at the girl's ignorance of Cree psychology.

"The harm is already done," he said. "One man is found stabbed; also the outfit of another gone. The third man comes back. No matter what M'sieu Gillies and Pere Henri tell them they will believe the man guilty who got out alive."

"They will not believe these Lelacs, when they are shown to be liars,"

she insisted, stamping her foot impatiently.

"They have lied about the rifle and fur only, Julie. They are telling the truth when they say they found Antoine and some of Piquet's outfit.

The rest does not matter except to make me a thief as well as murderer."

"Oh, but it is all so unjust, so terrible to be accused like this when because of your good heart you wished to bury Antoine decently in the spring instead of leaving him in the snow where they would never have found him. It is too----" Julie Breton's voice broke with emotion.

Through tears her dark eyes flashed in protest at the pa.s.s to which a blind fate had brought an innocent man.

Marcel was deeply touched by this revelation of the girl's loyalty; but her tears roused his heart to a wild beating. Unable to speak, he faced her, his dark features illumined with the grat.i.tude and love he could not voice. For a s.p.a.ce he sat fighting for the mastery of his emotions.