The Whelps of the Wolf Part 2

Then Kovik, seemingly changing his mind, seized the puppy by the loose skin of her neck and dragged her, protesting vigorously, to Jean, while the mother dog came trotting up, ears erect, curious of what the master she feared was doing with her progeny.

"Dees you' dog!" said the Esquimo.

Marcel patted the back of the puppy, still in the grasp of her owner, while she muttered her wrath at the touch of the stranger. Although they owed him much, he thought, yet these Huskies wished to make him pay dearly for the dog. Still he was glad to get her, even at such a price.

So he went to the cache, loosened the lashings of his fur-pack, and returned with two prime marten pelts, offering them to the Esquimo.

Again Kovik's round face was divided by a grin. The wrinkles radiated from the narrow eyes which snapped.

"You lak' seal in riv'--ketch boy. Tak' de dog--we no want skin." And shaking his head, the Husky pushed away the pelts.

Slowly the face of Marcel changed with surprise as he sensed the import of Kovik's words. They were making him a present of the dog.

"You--you geeve to me--dese puppy?" he stammered, staring into the grinning face of the Esquimo, delighted with the success of his little ruse.

Kovik nodded.

"T'anks, t'anks!" cried Jean, his eyes suspiciously moist as he wrung the Husky's hand, then seized that of the chuckling woman. "You are good people; I not forget de Kovik."

He had done these honest Esquimos a wrong. Now, after the fear of defeat, and the bitterness, the puppy he had coveted was his. He was not to return to Whale River empty handed, the laughing-stock of his partners. It had been indeed worth while, his plunge into the bad-lands, for in two years he would have the dog-team of his dreams. Some day this four-months-old puppy should make the fortune of Jean Marcel.

But little he realized, as he exulted in his good luck, how vital a part in his life, and in the life of Julie Breton, this wild puppy with the white socks was to play.

CHAPTER III

THE FRIEND OF DEMONS

When Marcel put his canoe into the water the following morning, to cross to his net, three young Esquimos, who had been loitering near Kovik's lodge, followed him to the beach, and as he left the sh.o.r.e, hurled at his back a torrent of Husky abuse.

What he had hoped to avoid had come. It would have been better to listen to Kovik's warning against delaying his departure and attempting to fish at the rapids after the salmon arrived. The use of the boy's spear, the day previous, had brought the feeling among the younger men to a head.

They meant to drive him down river.

Removing the whitefish and small salmon, Jean lifted his net and stretching it to dry on the sh.o.r.e, recrossed the stream. On the beach awaiting his return were the Huskies. Clearly, they had decided that he was possessed of no supernatural powers and could now be bullied with impunity. As he did not wish to embroil his friend Kovik in his defense, when he had smoked his last catch he would leave. But the blood of the fighting Marcels was slowly coming to a boil. If these raw fish-eaters thought that they could frighten the grandson of the famous etienne Laca.s.se, and the son of Andre Marcel, whose strength was a tradition on the East Coast, he could show them their mistake. Still, avoid trouble he must, for a fight would be suicide.

So ignoring the Huskies, who talked together in low tones, Marcel landed, cleaned some fish for the Koviks' kettle, and carried them up to the tepee where the family were still asleep. Returning, the hot blood rose to the bronzed face of the Frenchman at what he saw.

The three Esquimos were coolly feeding his fish to the dogs.

Reckless of the consequences, in the blind rage which choked him, Marcel reached the pilferers of his canoe before they realized that he was on them. Seizing one by his long hair, with a wrench he hurled the surprised Husky backward into the water and sent a second reeling to the stony beach with a fierce blow in the face. The third, retreating from the fury of the attack of the maddened white man, drew his skinning knife; but seizing his paddle, Marcel sent the knife spinning with a vicious slash which doubled the screaming Husky over a broken wrist.

Turning, he saw his first victims making down the beach toward the tepees, while the uproar of the dogs was swiftly arousing the camp.

Then, as his blood cooled and his judgment returned, the youth, who had suffered and dared much that he might have dogs for the next long snows, realized the height of his folly. They had baited him into furnishing them with an excuse for attacking him. Now even the faithful Kovik would be helpless against them. He would never see Whale River and Julie Breton again. Already the Huskies were emerging from their tepees, to hear the tale of his late antagonists. There was no time to lose before they rushed him.

Bounding up the beach to Kovik's tepee for his rifle, he rapidly explained the situation to the Esquimo, while in his ears rang the shouts of the excited Huskies and the yelping of the dogs. Jean did not hope to escape alive from this bedlam, but of one thing he was sure, he would die like a Marcel, with a smoking gun in his hands.

Urging Jean to get his fur-pack and smoked fish to his canoe at once, Kovik hurried down the sh.o.r.e to the knot of wildly excited Esquimos.

With the aid of the grateful wife and son of Kovik, Marcel's canoe was swiftly loaded and his treasured puppy lashed in the bow. But the rush up the beach of an infuriated throng bent on his death, which Marcel stoically awaited beside a large boulder, was delayed. Not a hundred yards distant, the doughty Kovik, the center of an arguing mob, was fighting with all the wits he possessed for the man who had saved his son. For Marcel to attempt to escape by water would only have drawn the fire of the Huskies and nullified Kovik's efforts, and their kayaks, faster than any canoe, were below him. A break for the "bush," even if successful, in the end, meant starvation. So with extra cartridges between his teeth, and in his hands, Jean Marcel grimly fingered the trigger-guard of his rifle, as he waited at the boulder for the turn of the dice down the sh.o.r.e.

Minutes, each one an eternity to the man at bay, pa.s.sed. But Kovik still held his men, and Marcel clearly noted a change in the manner of the Huskies. The shouting had ceased. His friend was winning.

Shortly, Kovik left the group and walked rapidly toward Marcel, followed at a distance by his people.

"Dey keel you, but Kovik say you fr'en' wid spirit; he come down riv'

an' eat Husky," explained the worried defender of Jean. "Kovik say you shoot wid spirit gun, all de Husky; so you go, queek!"

The broad face of Kovik split in a grim smile as he gripped the hand of the relieved Marcel and pushed off his canoe. Thus, doubly, had the loyal Esquimo paid for the life of his son.

With the emotions of a man suddenly reprieved from a sentence of death, Marcel poled his canoe out into the current. Behind him, the Esquimos had already joined Kovik on the sh.o.r.e, when, warned by a shout from his friend, Marcel instinctively ducked as a seal spear whistled over his head. Some doubter was testing the magic of the white demon.

Seizing his paddle Jean swiftly crossed the river and secured his precious net. But he was not yet rid of his enemies. If the young men, conquering their fear of his friendship with demons, at once launched their kayaks, they could overhaul his loaded canoe. But once clear of the last tepees, with his pursuers behind him, he was confident that he could pick them off with his rifle as fast as they came up in their rocking craft.

With all the power of his iron back and shoulders, Jean drove his canoe on the strong current; but Kovik had the Huskies in hand and they did not follow. Shortly he had pa.s.sed the last lodge on the sh.o.r.e and the camp was soon in the distance. It seemed like a dream--his peril of the last hour; and now, a free man again, with his puppy in the bow, he was on his way to the coast and Julie Breton.

Suddenly two rifles cracked in the rocks on the near beach. The paddle of Marcel dropped from his limp hands. Headlong he lurched to the floor of the canoe. Again the guns spat from the boulders. Two bullets whined over the birch-bark. But save for the yelping puppy in the bow, there was no movement in the canoe, as it slid, the cat's-paw of the current.

Waving their arms in triumph at the collapse of the feared white man, whose magic had been impotent before their bullets, the Huskies hurried along sh.o.r.e after the canoe. Carried by breeze and current, with its whimpering puppy and silent human freight the craft grounded a half-mile below the ambush. On came the chattering pair of a.s.sa.s.sins, already quarrelling over the division of the outfit of the dead man--delirious with the sweetness of their vengeance for the rough handling the stricken one in the canoe had meted out to them but an hour before. The dog, although lashed to the bow thwart, had managed to crawl out of the boat and was struggling with the thongs which held her, when the Huskies came running up. Staring into the birch-bark, they turned to each other gray faces on which was written ghastly fear.

The canoe was empty!

The white man they had thought to find a bloodied heap, was, after all, a maker of magic--a friend of demons. Kovik had told the truth. They were lost!

Palsied with dread, their feet frozen to the beach, the young ruffians awaited the swift vengeance of their enemy. And it came.

Hard by, a rifle crashed in the boulders. With a scream, a Husky reeled backward with a shattered hand, as his gun, torn from his grasp by the impact of the bullet, rattled on the stones. A second shot, splintering the b.u.t.t of his rifle, hurled the other to his knees. Then with a demonical yell, Marcel sprang from his ambush.

Running like caribou jumped by barren-ground wolves, the panic-stricken Huskies fled from the place of horror, pursued by the ricochetting bullets of the white demon, until they disappeared up the sh.o.r.e.

"A'voir, M'sieurs!" cried Marcel. "De nex' tam you ambush cano', don'

let eet dref behin' de point." And shaking with laughter, turned to his yelping puppy, frenzied with excitement.

"De Husky t'ink we not go to Whale Riviere, eh?" he said, stroking the trembling shoulders of the worrying dog. "But Jean and hees pet.i.te chienne, dey see Julie Breton jus' de same."

Putting his puppy in the canoe, Marcel continued on down the river.

When the shots from ambush whined past his face, Marcel had flattened to the floor of the craft, both for cover and to deceive the Huskies. The second shots convinced him that he had but two to deal with. Slitting the bark skin near the gunwale, that he might watch the sh.o.r.e without betraying the fact that he was conscious, and thereby draw their fire, while they were protected from his by the boulders, he learned that the craft was working toward the beach.

His plan was swiftly made. Driven by the racing current, the canoe had already left the Esquimos, following the sh.o.r.e, in the rear. He would allow the craft to ground and hold his fire until they were on top of him. But the boat finally reached the beach at a point hidden from the pursuing Huskies. With a bound Marcel was out of the canoe and concealed among the rocks. Great as was the temptation to leave the men who had ambushed him in cold blood, shot upon the beach, a sinister warning to their fellows, the thought of Kovik's position at the camp forced him to content himself with disarming and sending them shrieking up the sh.o.r.e with his bullets worrying their heels.

Often, during the day, as Marcel put mile after mile of the Salmon between himself and the camp at the rapids, the puppy c.o.c.ked curious ears as the new master ceased paddling, to roar with laughter at the memory of two flying Esquimos.

CHAPTER IV