CHAPTER x.x.xVI

DREAMS

Christmas was but a week distant. For the first time in years Jean Marcel possessed a dog-team, and through the long December nights he had come to a decision to talk to Julie Breton once more, as in the old days, before she left Whale River forever.

Led by Fleur, Colin, Angus and Jules, now grown to huge huskies, already abreast of their mother in height and bulk of bone, and showing the wolf strain in their rangy gait and in red lower-lids of their amber eyes, were jingling down the river trail to the festivities at the post. For, from Fort Chimo, west across the wide north, to Rampart House, Christmas and New Years are kept. From far and wide come dog-teams of the red hunters down the frozen river trails for the feasting and merrymaking at the fur-posts. Two weeks, "fourteen sleeps" on the trail, going and coming, is not held by many a hardy hunter and his family too high a price to pay for a few short days of trading and gossip and dancing.

There are many who trap too far from the posts and in country too inaccessible to make the journey possible, but throughout the white desolation of the fur lands the spirit of Christmas is strong and yearly the frozen valleys echo to the tinkling of the bells of dog-teams and the laughter of the children of the snows.

Over the beaten river trail, ice-hardened by the pa.s.sage of many sleds preceding them, romped Fleur and her sons, toying with the weight of the two men and the food bags on the sled. At times, Jean and Michel ran behind the team to stretch their legs and start their chilled blood, for it was forty below zero. But to the dogs, travelling without wind at forty below on a beaten trail, was sheer delight. Often, on the high barrens of the Salmon they had slept soundly in their snow holes at minus sixty.

As Jean watched his great lead-dog, her thick coat of slate-gray and white glossy with superb vitality, set a pace for her rangy sons which sent the white miles sliding swiftly past, his heart sang.

Good all day for a thousand pounds, they were, on a broken trail, and since November he had in vain sought the limit of their staying power.

Not yet the equals of their mother in pulling strength, at eighteen months their wolf-blood had already given the puppies her stamina. What a team to bring the Christmas mails up the coast from East Main! he thought, idly whirling the whip of plaited caribou hide which had never flecked the ears of Fleur, but which he sometimes needed when the excitable Colin or Angus scented game and, puppy-like, started to bolt.

No dogs on the coast could take the trail from these sons of Fleur. No dog-team he had ever seen could break-out and trot away with a thousand pounds. That winter they had done it with a load of caribou meat on the barrens. Yes, next year he would accept Gillies' offer and put Fleur and her sons on the winter-mail--Fleur, and the team she had given him; his Fleur, whom he had followed and fought for: who had in turn battled for his life.

"Marche, Fleur!" he called, his eyes bright with his thoughts.

The lead-dog leaped from a swinging trot into a long lope, straightening the traces, followed by the team keen for a run. Away they raced in the good going of the hard trail. Then, in early afternoon when the sun hung low in the dim west, the men turned into the thick timber of the sh.o.r.es, where, sheltered from the wind, they shovelled out a camp ground with their snow-shoes and built a roaring fire while the puppies, ravenous for their supper, yelped and fretted until Jean threw them the frozen fish which they caught in the air and bolted.

Before Jean and Michel had boiled their tea and caribou stew, four s.h.a.ggy shapes with noses in tails were asleep in the snow, indifferent to the sting of the strengthening cold which made the spruces around them snap, and split the river ice with the boom of cannon.

Wrapped in his fur robe before the fire, Marcel lay wondering if he should find Julie Breton still at Whale River.

Hours later, waking with a groan, Marcel sat upright in his blankets.

Near him the tired Michel snored peacefully. Throwing a circle of light on the surrounding spruce, huge embers of the fire still burned. The moon was dead, a veil of haze masking the dim stars. It was bitter cold.

Half out of his covering, the startled _voyageur_ shivered, but it was not from the bite of the air. It was the stark poignancy of the dream from which he had escaped, that left him cold.

He had stood by the big chute of the Conjuror's Falls on the Ghost, known as the "Chute of Death," and as he gazed into the boiling maelstrom of white-water, the blanched face of Julie Breton had looked up at him, her lips moving in hopeless appeal, as she was swept from sight.

Into the roaring flume he had plunged headlong, frenziedly seeking her, as he vainly fought down through the gorge, buffeted and mauled by the churning water, but though he hunted the length of the river below, never found her.

Again, he was travelling with Fleur and the team in a blizzard, when out of the smother of snow before him beckoned the wraith of Julie Breton--always just ahead, always beckoning to him. Pushing his dogs to their utmost he never drew nearer, never reached the wistful face he loved, luring him through the curtain of snow.

Marcel freshened the fire and lighted his pipe. It was long before he threw off the grip of his dreams and slept.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

FOR LOVE OF A GIRL

Two days before Christmas the team of Jean Marcel, its harness brave with colored worsted, meeting the snarls of hostile Cree curs with the like threat of white fangs, jingled gaily past sleep-house and tepees, and drew up before the log trade-house at Whale River. Returning the greeting of the Crees who hailed him, he threw open the slab-door of the building.

"Bon jour, Jean, eet ees well dees Chreesmas you come." The grave face of Jules Duroc checked the jest on Marcel's lips as he shook his friend's hand.

"You are sad, mon ami; what has happened to the merry Jules?" Jean asked.

"Ah, Jean Marcel! Dere ees bad news for you at Whale River."

Across Marcel's brain flashed the memory of his dreams. Julie! Something had happened to Julie Breton. His speeding heart shook him as an engine a boat. A vise on his throat smothered the questions he strove to ask.

His lips twitched, but from them came no words, as his questioning eyes held those of Jules.

"Yes, eet ees as you t'ink, Jean Marcel. She ees ver' seek."

Marcel's hands closed on Jules' arms as he demanded hoa.r.s.ely:

"Mon Dieu! W'at ees eet, Jules? Tell me, w'at ees eet?"

"She has de bad arm. Cut de han' wid a knife."

Blood-poisoning, because of his medical ignorance, held less terror for Marcel than some strange fever, insidious and mysterious. He had feared that Julie Breton had a dread disease against which the crude skill of the north is helpless. So, as he hastened to the Mission where he found Mrs. Gillies installed as nurse, his hopes rose, for a wound in the hand could not be fatal.

From the anxious-eyed Pere Breton who met him at the door, Jean learned the story.

Ten days before, Julie had cut her hand with a knife while preparing frozen fish for cooking. For days she had ignored the wound, when the hand, suddenly reddening, began to swell, causing much pain. Gillies and her brother had opened the inflamed wound, cleansing it with bichloride, but in spite of their efforts, the swelling had increased, advancing to the elbow.

She was now running a high fever, suffering great pain and frequently delirious. They realized that the proper treatment was an opening of the lymphatic glands of forearm and elbow to reach the poison slowly working upward, but did not dare attempt it. The priest told Marcel that in such cases if the poison was not absorbed into the circulation or reached by operation, it would extend to the arm-pit, then to the neck, with fatal termination.

Jean Marcel listened with head in hands to the despairing brother. Then he asked:

"Is there at Fort George or East Main, no one who could help her?"

"At Fort George, Monsieur Hunter who has been lately ordered there to the Protestant church, is a medical missionary. We learned this to-day when the Christmas mail arrived. But they were five days coming from Fort George with their poor dogs. It will take you eight days to make the round trip and even in a week it may be too late--too late----" He finished with a groan.

"Father, I will go and bring this missionary. I shall return before a week."

"G.o.d speed you, my son! The mail team is worn out and we were sending a team of the Crees, but they have no dogs like yours."

Mrs. Gillies led Marcel into Julie Breton's room and left them. On her white bed, with wayward ma.s.ses of dusky hair tumbled on her pillow, lay Julie Breton, moaning low in the delirium of high fever. On a pillow at her side lay her bandaged left arm. As Marcel looked long at the flushed face with its parted lips murmuring incoherently, the muscles of his jaw flexed through the frost-blackened skin as he clenched his teeth at his helplessness to aid her--this stricken girl for whom he would have given his life.

Then he knelt, and lifting the limp hand on the coverlet, pressed it long to his lips, rose, and went out.

When Mrs. Gillies returned she found the right hand of Julie Breton wet--and understood.

First feeding and loosing his dogs in the stockade Marcel hurried to the trade-house. There he obtained from Jules five days' rations of whitefish for the dogs, and some pemmican, hard bread and tea.

"You t'ink you can mak' For' George een t'ree day?" Jules shook his head doubtfully. "Eet nevaire been made een t'ree day, Jean."

"No one evair before on de East Coast travel as I travel, Jules," was the low reply.

Gillies, Pere Breton and McCain, talking earnestly, entered the room to overhear Marcel's words.

"Welcome back, Jean; you are going to Fort George instead of Baptiste?"