CHAPTER IX
JEAN AND JAN
Half a mile down the ridge, where it sloped up gradually from theforests and swamps of the plain, a team of powerful Malemutes wererunning at the head of a toboggan. On the sledge was a young half-Creewoman. Now beside the sledge, now at the lead of the dogs, cracking hiswhip and shouting joyously, ran Jean de Gravois.
"Is it not beautiful, my Iowaka?" he cried for the hundredth time, inCree, leaping over a three-foot boulder in his boundless enthusiasm."Is this not the glorious world, with the sun just rising off there,and spring only a few days away? It is not like the cold chills atChurchill, which come up with the icebergs and stay there all summer!What do you think of your Jean de Gravois and his country now?"
Jean was bringing back with him a splendid young woman, with big,lustrous eyes, and hair that shone with the gloss of a raven's wing inthe sun. She laughed at him proudly as he danced and leaped beside her,replying softly in Cree, which is the most beautiful language in theworld, to everything that he said.
Jean leaped and ran, cracked his caribou whip, and shouted and sanguntil he was panting and red in the face. Just as Iowaka had calledupon him to stop and get a second wind, the Malemutes dropped back upontheir haunches where Jan Thoreau lay, twisted and bleeding, in the snow.
"What is this?" cried Jean.
He caught Jan's limp head and shoulders up in his arms, and calledshrilly to Iowaka, who was disentangling herself from the thick furs inwhich he had wrapped her.
"It is the fiddler I told you about, who lives with Williams at PostLac Bain!" he shouted excitedly in Cree. "He has been murdered! He hasbeen choked to death, and torn to pieces in the face, as if by ananimal!" Jean's eyes roved about as Iowaka kneeled beside him. "What afight!" he gasped. "See the footprints--a big man and a small boy, andthe murderer has gone on a sledge!"
"He is warm," said Iowaka. "It may be that he is not dead."
Jean de Gravois sprang to his feet, his little black eyes flashing witha dangerous fire. In a single leap he was at the side of the sledge,throwing off the furs and bundles and all other objects except hisrifle.
"He is dead, Iowaka. Look at the purple and black in his face. It isJean de Gravois who will catch the murderer, and you will stay here andmake yourself a camp. Hi-o-o-o-o!" he shouted to the Malemutes.
The team twisted sinuously and swiftly in the trail as he sped over theedge of the mountain. Upon the plain below he knelt upon the toboggan,with his rifle in front of him; and at his low, hissing commands, whichreached no farther than the dogs' ears, the team stretched their longbodies in pursuit of the missioner and his huskies.
Jean knew that whoever was ahead of him was not far away, and helaughed and hunched his shoulders when he saw that his magnificentMalemutes were making three times the speed of the huskies. It was ashort chase. It led across the narrow plain and into a dense tangle ofswamp, where the huskies had picked their way in aimless wanderinguntil they came out in thick balsam and Banksian pine. Half a milefarther on, and the trail broke into an open which led down to thesmooth surface of a lake, and two-thirds across the lake was thefleeing missioner.
The Malemute leader flung open his jaws in a deep baying triumph, andwith a savage yell Jean cracked his caribou whip over his back. He sawthe man ahead of him lean over the end of his sledge as he urged hisdogs, but the huskies went no faster; and then he caught the glitter ofsomething that flashed for a moment in the sun.
"Ah!" said Jean softly, as a bullet sang over his head. "He fires atJean de Gravois!" He dropped his whip, and there was the warm glow ofhappiness in his little dark face as he leveled his rifle over thebacks of his Malemutes. "He fires at Jean de Gravois, and it is Jeanwho can hamstring a caribou at three hundred yards on the run!"
For an instant, at the crack of his rifle, there was no movement ahead;then something rolled from the sledge and lay doubled up in the snow. Ahundred yards beyond it, the huskies stopped in a rabble and turned tolook at the approaching strangers.
Beside it Jean stopped; and when he saw the face that stared up at him,he clutched his thin hands in his long black hair and cried out, inshrill amazement and horror:
"The saints in Heaven, it is the missioner from Churchill!"
He turned the man over, and found where his bullet had entered underone arm and come out from under the other. There was no spark of lifeleft. The missioner was already dead.
"The missioner from Churchill!" he gasped again.
He looked up at the warm sun, and kicked the melting snow under hismoccasined feet.
"It will thaw very soon," he said to himself, looking again at the deadman, "and then he will go into the lake."
He headed his Malemutes back to the forest. Then he ran out and cut thetraces of the exhausted huskies, and with his whip scattered them infreedom over the ice.
"Go to the wolves!" he shouted in Cree. "Hide yourselves from the post,or Jean de Gravois will cut out your tongues and take your skins offalive!"
When he came back to the top of the mountain, Jean found Iowaka makinghot coffee, while Jan was bundled up in furs near the fire.
"It is as I said," she called. "He is alive!"
Thus it happened that the return of Jean de Gravois to the post waseven more dramatic than he had schemed it to be, for he brought backwith him not only a beautiful wife from Churchill, but also the halfdead Jan Thoreau from the scene of battle on the mountain. And in themystery of it all he reveled for two days; for Jean de Gravois said nota word about the dead man on the lake beyond the forest, nor did thehuskies come back into their bondage to give a hint of the missingmissionary.