Breed of the Wolf/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
March, the Crees’ “Moon of the Crust on the Snow,” was ten days old. Camped on a chain of lakes in the Salmon country Marcel had been following the few traps for which he had bait and at the same time had hunted widely for food. Soon, the sun, mounting higher and higher each day at noon, would begin to soften the surface of the snow which the freezing nights would harden into crust. Then he could travel far and fast.
The Frenchman’s drawn face and loose capote evidenced the weeks of undernourishment; but, though Fleur’s great bones and her ropes of muscle, banding her back and shoulders, thrust through her shaggy coat with undue prominence, still she had as yet suffered little from the famine. So long as Jean Marcel had had fish or meat, his growing puppy had received the greater share, for she had already attained in that winter on the Ghost a height and bulk of bone equal to that of her slate-gray mother now far on the north coast.
For days Jean had been praying for the coming of the crust. With it he planned to make a wide circle back into the high barrens in search of returning caribou. Once the crust had set hard, traveling with the sled into new country would be easy. Food he must accumulate to take them through the April thaws, or perish miserably, with no one to carry the news of their fate to Whale River.
Since the heartbreaking days when the white wolves drove the caribou south and the rabbits disappeared, he had, in moments of depression, sat by the fire at night, wondering, when June again came to Whale River and one by one the canoes of the Crees appeared, if by chance a pair of dark eyes would ever turn to the broad surface of the river for the missing craft of Jean Marcel—whether in the joy of her love for another the heart of a girl would sometimes sadden for one whose bones whitened in far Ungava hills.
At last the crust came. With eyes shielded by snow goggles made by cutting slits in flat pieces of spruce, for the glare of the sun on the barrens was intense, Jean started with his dog. All the food he had was on his sled. He had burned his bridges, for if he failed in his hunt they would starve.
They were passing through the thick spruce of a sheltered valley, traveling upwind, when Fleur, sniffing hard, grew excited. There was something ahead, probably fur, so he did not tie his dog. Shortly Fleur started to bolt with the sled and Jean turned her loose. Following his yelping husky, who broke through the new crust at every leap, Marcel entered a patch of dense cedar scrub. There Fleur distanced him.
Shortly, a scream, followed by a din of snarls and squalls filled the forest. Close ahead a bitter struggle of creatures milling to the death was on. Jean, fearing for the eyes of his raw puppy battling for the first time with the great cat of the North, broke through the scrub to see the lynx spring backward from the rush of the dog and leap for the limbs of a low cedar. But the cat was too slow, for at the same instant Fleur’s jaws snapped on his loins, and with a wrench of her powerful neck the husky threw the animal to the snow with a broken back. In a flash she changed her grip, the long fangs crunching through the neck of the helpless beast, and with a quiver the lynx was dead. Hot with the lust of battle, Fleur worried the body of her enemy. Reaching her, Jean proudly patted her back.
“Good Fleur! She make de loup-cervier run!” he cried, delighted with the courage and power of his puppy. Then he anxiously examined the slashes of rapier claws on Fleur’s muzzle and shoulders. “Good!” he said, relieved. “De lynx he very weak or he cut you deeper dan dese scratch.”
As Jean hastily skinned the dead cat he marveled at its emaciation.
“Ah! He also miss de rabbit. Lucky he starve or you get de beeg scratch, Fleur.”
For answer the hot tongue of the dog sought his hands as she raised her brown eyes to his. With arms around her shaggy shoulders her proud master muttered into the ears of the delighted husky love words that would have been strange indeed to any but Fleur, who found them sweet beyond measure.
“My Fleur, she grow to be de dog, de most sauvage!” he cried. “Some day she keel de wolf, eh?”
Continuing east, four days later Marcel camped in a valley on the flank of a great barren. In the morning, tying Fleur with a rawhide thong which she could have chewed through with ease but had been taught to respect, he followed the scrub along the edge of the barren searching for caribou signs. Often he stopped to gaze out across the white waste reaching away east to the horizon, seeking for blue-gray objects whose movements in scraping away the snow to the moss beneath would alone mark them as caribou.
All day he skirted the barren but at last turned back to his camp sick at heart and spent with the long day on the crust following his meager breakfast. Deep in the shelter of the thick timber of the valley, he had dug away the snow for his fire and sleeping place, lashing above his bed of spruce boughs a strip of canvas which acted both as wind break and heat reflector. When they had eaten their slim supper, he freshened the fire with birch logs and sat down with Fleur’s head between his knees. The “Starving Moon” of the Montagnais hung overhead.
“Fleur, you know we got onlee two day meat left? W’en dat go, Jean Marcel go, too—in few day, a week maybe; an’ Fleur, w’at she do?”
The husky’s slant eyes shone with her dog love into the set face of her master. She whined, wrinkling her black nose, then her jaw dropped, which was her manner of laughing, while her hot breath steamed in the freezing air. She waited in vain for the smile that had never failed to light Marcel’s face in the old days at such advances. Dropping his mittens Jean held the massive head between his naked hands.
“Jean Marcel feel ver’ bad to leave Fleur alone. Wid no game she starve too w’en he go.”
Fleur’s deep throat rumbled in ecstasy as the hands of the master rubbed her ears.
“Back on de Ghost, Fleur, ees some feesh and meat Joe and Antoine left; not much, but it tak’ us to Whale Riviere, maybe.”
The lips of Fleur lifted from her white teeth at the names of Jean’s partners.
“You remember Joe Piquet, Fleur? Joe Piquet!”
The husky growled. She knew only too well the name, Joe Piquet.
“It ees four-five sleep to de Ghost, Fleur. Shall we go? W’at you t’ink?” The strained face in the fur-lined hood approached the dog’s, whose eyes shifted uneasily from the fixed look of her master.
“We go back to de Ghost, Fleur? Or mak’ one beeg hunt for de deer?”
The perplexed husky unable to meet Marcel’s piercing eyes sprang to her feet with a yelp.
“Good!” he cried. “We mak’ de beeg hunt!” He had had his answer and on the yelp of his dog had staked their fate. To-morrow he would push on into the barrens and find the caribou drifting north again, or flicker out with his dog as men for centuries had perished, beaten by the long snows.
In the morning he divided his remaining food into four parts; a breakfast and a supper for himself and Fleur, for two days. After that—strips of caribou hide and moss, boiled in snow water, to ease the throbbing ache of their stomachs.
Eating his thin stew, he shortened his belt still another hole over his lean waist, and harnessing Fleur, turned resolutely east into country no white man had ever seen, bent on a bold gamble for food—or an endless sleep in the blue Ungava hills.
In his weakened state, black spots and pin points of light danced before his eyes. Distant objects were often magnified out of all proportion. So intense was the glare of the high March sun on the crust that his wooden goggles alone saved him from snow blindness. He traveled a few miles until dizziness forced him to rest. Later he continued on, to rest again, while the black nose of Fleur, who was still comparatively strong, sought his face, as she wondered at the reason for the master’s strange actions.
By noon he had crossed no trail except that of a wolverene, seeking food like himself, and finally went down into the timbered valley of a brook where he left Fleur and the sled. Then he started again on his hopeless search. As the streams flowed northeast, he was certain that he had crossed the Height of Land to the Ungava Bay watershed, and was now in the headwater country of the fabled River of Leaves, into which no hunter from Whale River had ever penetrated.
Marcel was snowshoeing through the scrub at the edge of the plateau when far out on the barren he saw two spots. Shortly he was convinced that the objects moved.
“By gar, deer! At last they travel nord!” he gasped, gazing with bounding pulses at the distant spots almost indistinguishable against the snow. Meat out there on the barren awaited him—food and life, if only he could get within range!
Cutting back into the scrub, that he might begin his stalk of the caribou from the near est cover with the wind in his face, he slowly moved behind a rise in the ground out into the barren. With a caution he had never before exercised, lest the precious food now almost within reach should escape him; the starving man advanced. At last he crawled up behind a low knoll and stretched out on the snow. Cocking and thrusting his rifle before him, he wormed his way to the top of the rise and looked.
There a hundred yards off, playing on the crust, were two arctic foxes. Distorting their size, the barren-ground mirage had, from a distance, cruelly deceived him.
With a groan the spent hunter dropped his head on his arms. “All dees for fox!” he murmured. Then, because foxes were meat, he took careful aim and shot one, wounding the other, which he killed with the second bullet. Hanging the carcasses in a spruce, Marcel continued to skirt the barren toward the east.
As dusk fell he returned to Fleur and made camp.
Cutting up and boiling one of the foxes, he and the dog ate ravenously of the rank flesh, but hope was low in the breast of Jean Marcel. A day or two more of half rations and he was done. And when the deer did come, it would be too late. Jean Marcel would be past aid. And Fleur—what would become of her? True, she could live on the flanks of the caribou herds like the wolves—till the wolves found and destroyed her.
Tortured by such thoughts, he sat by his fire, the husky’s great head on his knee, her eyes searching his, mutely demanding the reason for his strange silence.
Another day of fruitless wandering in which he had pushed as far east as his fading strength would take him, and Jean shared the last of the food with his dog. He had fought hard to find the deer, had already traveled one hundred miles into the barrens, but be felt that it was no use; he was beaten. The spirit of the coureurs whose blood coursed his veins would drive him on and on, but without food the days of his hunting would be few. Henceforth it would be caribou hide boiled with moss from the barrens to ease the pinch of his hunger, but his strength would swiftly go. Then, when hope died, rather than leave his dog to the wolves, he would shoot Fleur and, lying down beside her in his blanket, place the muzzle of his rifle against his own head.
Two days followed in which Marcel and Fleur drank the liquor from stewed caribou hide and moss while he continued to hunt. As he staggered into camp at the end of the second day the man was so weak that he scarcely found strength to gather wood for his fire. Fleur now showed signs of slow starvation in her protruding ribs and shoulders. Her heavy coat no longer shone with gloss but lay flat and lusterless. Vainly she whimpered for the food her heartsick master could not give her.
With the dog beside him, Marcel lay by his fire numbed into indifference to his fate. The torment of hunger had vanished, leaving only great weakness and a dazed brain. He thought of the three wooden crosses at Whale River; how restful it would be to lie beside them behind the mission, instead of sleeping far in the barrens where the great winds beat ceaselessly by over the treeless snows. At the mission Julie Breton might have planted forest flowers on the mound that marked the grave of Jean Marcel.
Julie! What hopes he had had of a little house of their own at Whale River, when he would have entered the service of the company and drove the mail packet down the coast with the team that Fleur should give him! How often he had pictured that home where Julie and the children would wait his return from summer voyage and winter trail; Julie Breton, whom he had loved from boyhood and who he had prided himself should love him, some day when he had proved his manhood among the swart men of the east coast.
All a dream! Julie was happy. She would soon marry the great man at East Main, while in a few days Jean Marcel was going to snuff out—smolder a while, as a fire from lack of wood, dying by inches—by inches; and then two shots. Poor Fleur! It had all come to pass because he had dared to follow and bring her home and had had no time to cache fish and game in the fall. She would have been better off with the half-breeds on the Rupert, where the caribou had gone. They would have kicked her, but fed her, too.
Now he must take her with him when the time came. No more starvation for her, and a death in the barrens when she met the white wolves. Yes, he would take her with him.