CHAPTER XI
THE WARNING IN THE WIND
One afternoon toward the end of the year when the early dusk had turnedMarcel back toward camp from his most northerly line of marten traps, hesuddenly stopped in his tracks on the ridge from which he had seen thelake on the Salmon headwaters the spring previous. Pushing back the hoodof his caribou capote to free his ears, he listened, motionless. Besidehim, with black nostrils quivering, Fleur sniffed the stinging air.
Again the faint, far, wailing chorus which had checked him, reachedMarcel's ears. The dog stiffened, her mane rising as she bared her whitefangs.
"You heard it too, Fleur?" muttered the man, softly, resting arabbit-skin mitten on the broad head of the nervous husky. Marcel gazedlong at the floor of snow to the north through wind-whipped ridges.
"Ah-hah!" he exclaimed, "dey turn dees way." Clearer now the stiffbreeze carried the call of the hunting wolves. Fleur burst into a frenzyof yelping. Seizing the dog, Marcel calmed her into silence. Then, afteran interval, the cry of the pack slowly faded, and shortly, the man'sstraining ears caught no sound save the fretting of the wind through thespruce.
Wolves he had often heard, singly, and in groups of four and five, butthe hunting howl which had been brought to him through the hills by thewind, he knew was not the clamor of a handful of timber-wolves, but theblood chorus of a pack. None but the white-wolves which, far to thenorth, hung on the flanks of the caribou herds could raise such ahunting cry and there was but one reason for their drifting south fromthe great Ungava barrens.
It was a sober face that Jean Marcel wore back to his camp. Largenumbers of arctic wolves in the country meant the departure of thetrapper's chief source of meat--the caribou. With the caribou gone, theyhad their limited supply of fish, and the rabbits, eked out by theflour, which would not carry them far, for the half-breeds, in spite ofhis warnings, had already consumed half of it. To be sure, the rabbitswould pull them through to the "break-up" of the long snows in April;would keep them from actual starvation. Then he cursed his partners forfailing to make themselves independent of meat by netting more fish inSeptember.
"To-morrow," said Marcel, on his return next day to the main camp, "westart for de barren and hunt de deer hard while dey stay in deescountree." The partners spoke, at times, in French patois and Cree, attimes in broken English.
"Wat you say, Jean? I got trap-line to travel to-morrow," objectedAntoine Beaulieu.
"I say dis," returned Marcel, commanding the attention of the two men bythe gravity of his face. "De deer will not be in dis countree eent'ree--four day."
"Ha! Ha! dat ees good joke, Jean Marcel!" exclaimed Piquet.
"Oui, dat ees good joke!" returned Marcel, rising and shaking a fingerin the grinning faces of his partners. "But I say dis to you, AntoineBeaulieu an' Joe Piquet. We go to de barren and hunt deer to-morrow or Itak' my share of flour and mak' my own camp."
Marcel's threat sobered the half-breeds. They had no desire to breakwith the Frenchman, whose initiative and daring they respected.
"De deer are plentee, I count seexteen to-day," argued Antoine.
"Oui, to-day de deer are here, but, whiff!" Jean waved his hand, "an'dey are gone; for las' night I hear de white wolves, not t'ree or four,but manee, ver' manee, drive de deer in de hills. Dey starve in de nordand come here for meat. To-morrow we go!"
Piquet and Beaulieu readily admitted that the white wolves, if theyappeared in numbers, would drive the caribou--called deer, in thenorth--out of the country, but they insisted that what Jean had heardwas the echoing of the call and answer of three or four timber wolvesgathering for a hunt. Never in his life had Joe Piquet, who was thirty,heard of arctic wolves appearing on the Great Whale headwaters. Thusthey argued, but Jean was obdurate. On the following day the three menstarted back into the barrens with Fleur and the sled.