CHAPTER XV
FOR LOVE OF A MAN
It had been with the feeling of a heavy load loosed from his shouldersthat the Frenchman left the Ghost. Disgusted with the laziness and lackof foresight of his partners in the autumn; through the strain and worryof the winter he had gradually lost all confidence in their capacity tofight through until spring brought back the fishing; and now thisrobbery 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 thecrooked-souled Piquet, henceforth it should be war to the knife. Knowingthat 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 Aprilthaws, when rotting ice would bar the waterways and soggy snow, thetrails, to all travel. Somehow, he and Fleur would pull through and seeJulie Breton and Whale River again. Somehow, they would live, but itmeant a dogged will and day after day, many a white mile of drudgery forhimself and the dog he loved. Crawl starved and beaten into WhaleRiver--caught like a mink in a trap by the pinch of the pitilesssnows--no Marcel ever did, and he would not be the first.
The February dusk hung in the spruce surrounding the half-way camp ofMarcel beside a pond in the hills dividing the watershed of the Ghostfrom the Salmon. For three days Jean had been picking up his trapspreparatory to making the break north to the beaver country. With alight load, for Fleur could not haul much over her weight on a freshlybroken trail in the soft snow, the toboggan-sled stood before the tentready for an early start under the stars. From the smoke-hole of thesmall tepee the sign of cooking rose straight into the biting air, forthere was no wind. But the half-ration of trout and beaver which wassimmering in the kettle would leave the clamoring stomach of the manunsatisfied. With the three beaver he had brought from the north and thefish and caribou from the Ghost, Marcel still had food for himself andhis dog for a fortnight, but he was not an Indian and was husbanding hisscanty store. Fleur had already bolted her fish, more supper than hermaster allowed himself, for Fleur was still growing fast and her needwas greater.
Disliking the smoke from the fire which often filled the tepee, Fleurslept outside under the low branches of a fir, and when it snowed,waked warm beneath a white blanket. For, enured to the cold, the huskyknows no winter shelter and needs none, sleeping curled, nose in bushytail, in a hole dug in the snow, through the bitter nights without frostbite.
As the dusk slowly blanketed the forest, here and there stars prickedout of the dark canopy of sky to light gradually the white hills rollingaway north to the dread valleys of the forbidden land of the Crees.Later, as the night deepened, the Milky Way drew its trail across theswarming stars. In the pinch of the strengthening cold, spruce andjack-pine snapped in the encircling forest, while the ice of lake andriver, contracting, boomed intermittently, like the shot of distantartillery.
On the northern horizon, the camp-fires of the giants flickered andglowed, fitfully; then, at length, loosing their bonds, snake-likeribbons of light writhed and twisted from the sky-line to the highheavens, in grotesque traceries; and across the white wastes of thepolar stage swept the eerie "Dance of the Spirits."
For a space Jean stood outside the tepee watching the never-ceasingwonder of the aurora; then sending Fleur to her bed, sought hisblankets. But no sting of freezing air might keep the furred andfeathered marauders of the night from their hunting; for faintly on thetense silence floated the "hoo-hoo!" of the snowy owl, patrolling thehaunts of the wood-mice. Out of the murk of a cedar swamp rose thescream of a starving lynx. Presently, over star-lit ridges drifted thecall of a mating timber wolf.
The Northern Lights had dimmed and faded. Sentinel stars alone guardedthe white solitudes, when, from the gloom of the spruce out into thelighted snow moved a dark shape. Noiselessly the muffled racquettes ofthe skulker advanced. As the figure crept nearer the tent, it suddenlystopped, frozen into rigidity, head forward, as though listening. Aftera space, it stirred again. Something held in the hands glinted in thestarlight, like steel. It was the action of a rifle, made bright bywear.
When the creeping shape reached the banking of the tepee, again itstopped, stiff as a spruce. The seconds lengthened into minutes. Then ahand reached out to the canvas. In the hand was a knife. Slowly the keenedge sawed at the frozen fabric. At last the tent was slit.
Leaning forward the hunter of sleeping men enlarged the opening andpressed 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 hisrifle through the opening and dropped his head as if to aim; when, fromthe rear a gray shape catapulted into his back, flattening him on thesnow. As the weight of the dog struck the crouching assassin, his rifleexploded inside the tent, followed by a scream of terror.
Again and again the long fangs of the husky slashed at the throat of thewrithing thing in the snow. Again and again the massive jaws snapped andtore, first the capote, then the exposed neck, to ribbons. Then withcocked 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 mangledthroat, stared the glazed eyes of Joe Piquet.
"By Gar! You travel far for de grub and de _revanche_, Joe Piquet," heexclaimed. Turning to the dog, snarling with hate of the prowling thingshe had destroyed, Jean led her away.
"Fleur, ma petite!" he cried, "she took good care of Jean Marcel whilehe sleep. Piquet, he thought he keel us both in de tent. He nevaire seeFleur under de fir." The great dog trembling with the heat of battle,her mane stiff, yelped excitedly. "She love Jean Marcel, my Fleur; andwhat a strength she has!" Rearing, Fleur placed her massive fore-pawson Marcel's chest, whining up into his face; then seizing a hand in herjaws, proudly drew him back to the dead man in the snow. There, raisingher head, as if in warning to all enemies of her master, she sent outover the white hills the challenging howl of the husky.
When Jean Marcel had buried the frozen body of Joe Piquet in a driftover the ridge, where the April thaws would betray him to the mercy ofhis kind, the forest creatures of tooth and beak and claw, he startedback to the Ghost with Fleur, taking Piquet's rifle to be returned tohis people with his fur and outfit. Confident that Antoine had had nopart in the attempt to kill him and get his provisions, he wishedBeaulieu to know Piquet's fate, as Antoine would now in all probabilitymake for Whale River and could carry a message. Furthermore if anythinghad by chance happened to Beaulieu, Marcel wished to know it beforestarting 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 theSalmon country, for the sake of their old friendship he would overlookthe half-breed's weakness under Piquet's influence, and offer to takehim.
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 noresponse.
Marcel's heavy eyebrows contracted in a puzzled look.
"Allo, Antoine!" Still no answer. Was he to find here more of the workof Joe Piquet? he wondered, as he swung back the slab-door of the shackand peered into the dim interior.
There in his bunk lay the half-breed.
"Wake up, Antoine!" Marcel cried, approaching the bunk; then the faintlight 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. JoePiquet, he t'ink to get our feesh and beaver and fur, den he tell dem atWhale Riviere we starve out. Poor Antoine!"
Sick with the discovery, Jean sat beside the dead man, his head in hishands. Bitterly now, he regretted that he had refused the hand of hisold friend in parting; that he had not taken him with him when he leftthe 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 tothe fate of the man he planned to kill.
"Poor Antoine!" Marcel sadly repeated. Outside, Fleur, fretting at thepresence of death, whined to be off.
In the cold sunrise, Jean lashed the body of his boyhood friend, whichhe had sewed in some canvas, on the food cache, that it might rest inpeace undefiled by the forest creatures, until on his return in May hemight give it decent burial. Beside it he placed the fur-packs, riflesand outfits of the two men.
"Adieu, Antoine!" he called, waving his hand at the shrouded shape onthe cache, and turned north.