The Whelps of the Wolf Part 17

Then he said huskily:

"Julie Breton, you give me great happiness--when you say you believe me--are still my friend."

"Oh, la, la! Nonsense!" she cried, dabbing with, a handkerchief at her wet eyes as she recovered her poise, "you are a boy, so foolish, Jean.

Do you think that we, your friends who know you, will permit this thing?

It is impossible!" And changed the subject, nor did she allow him to return to it.

CHAPTER XXIII

IN THE EYES OF THE CREES

Day by day the ebb-tide brought in the canoes of returning Crees.

Gradually tepees filled the post clearing. And with the coming of the hunters from the three winds, was heard many a tale of famine in far valleys; of families blotted out; of little victims of starvation and disease; of the aged too frail to endure through the lean moons of the rabbit-plague until the return of the caribou, which had spelt life to those who waited.

Tragedy there had been, as in every winter of famine; but however sinister were the secrets which, that spring, many a mute valley held locked in its green forests, no rumors of such, except the tale of the murders on the Ghost, had reached Whale River. Pitiless desertion of the aged and the helpless, death by violence, doubtless, the starving moon had shone upon; but none had lived to tell the tale, none had seen the evidence, except those who had profited with their lives, and their lips were forever sealed. And so, as Marcel had foreseen, to the gathering families of Crees who themselves had but lately escaped the maw of the winter, the tale of the Lelacs, expanding as it travelled, found ready acceptance.

As yet, Jean, chafing under the odium of his position at the post, had not faced his accusers. But the plan of his defense which had been decided on after a conference with Gillies and Pere Breton, depended for its success on the trading of their fur by the Lelacs, and the uncle and cousins of Joe Piquet for some reason had traded no fur. So the proud Frenchman went his way among the hunters at Whale River with a high head and silent tongue.

Many of those who, the spring previous, had lauded his daring in entering the land of the Windigo and voyaging to the coast by the Big Salmon, now, at his appearance exchanged significant glances, avoiding the steady eyes of the man they had condemned without a hearing. Shawled women and girls, who formerly, at the trade, had cast approving glances at the wide-shouldered youth with the clean-cut features, now whispered pointedly as he pa.s.sed and children often shrank from him in terror as from one defiled. But Marcel had been prepared for the effect of the tale of the Lelacs upon the mercurial red men, in the memories of many of whom still lurked the ghosts of deeds of their own whose ghastly details the ears of no man would ever hear.

Since his return he had not once met the Lelacs face to face. Always they had hastily avoided him when he appeared on the way to his canoe or the trade-house. Jean had been strictly ordered by Gillies under no circ.u.mstances to seek trouble with his accusers or their friends, so he ignored them. And their disinclination to encounter the son of the famous Andre Marcel had not gone unmarked by the keen eyes of more than one old hunter. Many a red man and half-breed, friends of the father, who respected the son, had frankly expressed to him their disbelief in the charges of the Lelacs, accepting his story which Gillies had published to the Crees, that Beaulieu had been stabbed by Joe Piquet while Marcel was absent and Piquet killed later by the dog. Strongly they had urged him to make the Lelacs eat their lies, promising their support; but Jean had explained that it was necessary to wait; later his day would come.

Occasionally when Marcel crossed the post clearing, pulsing with the varied life of the spring trade, to descend the cliff trail to his canoe, there marched by his side one whose name, also, was anathema with many of the Crees. That comrade was Fleur. The story of Piquet's death as told by Jean at the trade-house, though scouted by the Lelacs, had, nevertheless, left a deep impression; and the great dog, now called the "man-killer," who towered above the scrub huskies of the Indians as a mastiff over a poodle, was given a wide berth. But to avoid trouble with the Cree dogs, Jean kept Fleur for the most part in the Mission stockade. There Gillies and McCain and Jules had come to admire the bulk and bone of the husky they had last seen as a lumbering puppy, now in size and beauty far surpa.s.sing the Ungavas bought by the Company of the Esquimos. There, Crees, still friendly to Jean, lingered to gossip of the winter's hardships and stare in admiration at his dog. There, too, Julie romped with Fleur, grown somewhat dignified with the gravity of her approaching responsibilities. For, to the delight of Jean, Fleur was soon to present him with the dog-team of his dreams.

Then when the umiaks of the Esquimos began to arrive from the coast, packed with tousle-headed children and the priceless sled-dogs, taking Fleur, Jean sought out his old friend Kovik of the Big Salmon. As he approached the skin lodge on the beach, beside which the kin of Fleur were made fast to prevent promiscuous fighting with strange dogs, she answered their surly greeting with so stiff a mane, so fierce a show of fangs, that Jean pulled her away by her rawhide leash, lest her reputation suffer further by adding fratricide to her crimes.

Playmates of her puppyhood, mother who suckled her, she had forgotten utterly; vanished was all memory of her kin. She held but one allegiance, one love; the love approaching idolatry she bore the young master who had taken her in that far country from the strange men who beat her with clubs; who had brought her north again through wintry seas; who had companioned her through the long snows and in the dread days of the famine had shared with her his last meat. The center and sum of her existence was Jean Marcel. All other living things were as nothing.

"Kekway!" cried the squat pair of Huskies, delighted at the appearance of the man who had given them back their first born. "Kekway!" chuckled a half-dozen round-faced children, shaking Jean's hand in turn.

"Huh!" grunted the father, his eyes wide with wonder at the sight of Fleur, ears flat, muttering dire threats at her yelping brethren straining at their stakes, "dat good dog!"

"Oui, she good dog," agreed Jean. "Soon I have dog-team lak Husky!"

Shifting a critical eye from Fleur to his own dogs the Esquimo nodded.

"Ha! Ha! You ketch boy in water, you get bes' dog."

The Esquimo had not erred in his judgment of puppies. He had indeed given the man who had cheated the Big Salmon of his son the best of the litter. At sixteen months, Fleur stood inches higher at the shoulder and weighed twenty pounds more than her brothers. Truly, with the speed and stamina of their sire, the timber wolf, coupled with Fleur's courage and power, these puppies, whose advent he awaited, should make a dog-team unrivalled on the East Coast.

"Cree up dere," continued the Esquimo, pointing toward the post clearing, "say de dog keel man."

Marcel nodded gravely. "Oui, man try kill me, she kill heem."

"Huh! De ol' dog keel bad Husky, on Kogaluk one tam."

Fleur indeed had come from a fighting strain--dogs that would battle to the death or toil in the traces until they crumpled on the snow, for those they loved or to whom they owed allegiance.

CHAPTER XXIV

ON THE CLIFFS

Marcel was walking on the high river sh.o.r.e above the post with Julie Breton and Fleur. Like a floor below them the surface of the Great Whale moved without ripple in the still June afternoon. Out over the Bay the sun hung in a veil of haze. Back at the post, even the huskies were quiet, lured into sleep by the softness of the air. It was such a day as Jean Marcel had dreamed of more than a year before, in January, back in the barrens, when powdery snow crystals danced in the air as the lifting sun-dogs turned white wastes of rolling tundra into a shimmering sea. He was again with Julie on the cliffs, but there was no joy in his heart.

"The Lelacs have traded their fur," he said, breaking a long silence; "the hearing will take place soon, now."

"Yes, I know, you were with Monsieur Gillies and Henri very late last night," she replied, watching the antics of an inquisitive Canada jay in an adjacent birch.

"Yes, we had some work to do. The Lelacs will not like what we have to tell them."

"I knew that you would be able to show the Crees what bad people these Lelacs are."

"Yes, Julie, we shall prove them liars and thieves; but the stain on the name of Jean Marcel will remain. I cannot deny that Antoine was killed; the Crees will not believe my story."

"Nonsense, Jean," she burst out, "you must make them believe you!"

"Julie," he said, ignoring her words, "since my return I have wanted to tell you--that I wish you all happiness,"--he swallowed hard at the lump in his throat,--"I have heard that you leave Whale River soon."

At the words the girl flushed but turned a level gaze on the man, who looked at the dim, blue shapes of the White Bear Hills far on the southern horizon.

"You have not heard the truth," she said. "Monsieur Wallace has done me the honor to ask me to marry him, but Monsieur Wallace is still a Protestant."

The words from Julie's own lips stung Marcel like the lash of a whip, but his face masked his emotion.

Then she went on:

"I wanted to talk to you last summer, for you are my dear friend, but you were here for so short a while and we had but a word when you left." Then the girl burst out impulsively, "Ah, Jean; don't look that way! Won't you ever forgive me? I am--so sorry, Jean. But--you are a boy. It could never be that way. Why, you are as a brother."

Marcel's eyes still rested on the silhouetted hills to the south. He made no answer.

"Won't you forget, Jean, and remain a friend--a brother?"

He turned his sombre eyes to the girl.

"Yes, I shall always be your friend--your brother, Julie," he said. "But I shall always love you--I can't help that. And there is nothing to forgive. I hoped--once--that you might--love Jean Marcel; but now--it is over. G.o.d bless you, Julie!"

As he finished, Julie Breton's eyes were wet. Again Marcel gazed long into the south but with unseeing eyes. The girl was the first to break the silence.

"Jean," she said, returning to the charges of the Lelacs, "you must not brood over what the Crees are saying. What matters it that the ignorant Indians, some of whom, if the truth were known, have eaten their own flesh and blood in starvation camps, do not believe you. For shame! You are a brave man, Jean Marcel. Show your courage at Whale River as you have shown it elsewhere."

Sadly Marcel shook his head. "They will speak of me now, from Fort George to Mista.s.sini, as the man who killed his partners." And in spite of Julie Breton's words of cheer he refused to see his case in any other light.