The Whelps of the Wolf Part 24

That night when Julie had fed Fleur, she opened the stockade gate and stroking the great head of the dog, said slowly:

"Fleur would see Jean, Jean Marcel?"

At the sound of the master's name, Fleur's ears went forward, her slant eyes turning here and there for a sight of the familiar figure. Then with a whine she looked at Julie as if for explanation.

"Fleur will see Jean, soon. Will Fleur behave for Julie?"

With a yelp the husky leaped through the gate and ran to and fro outside, sniffing the air; then as if she knew the master were not there, returned, s.h.a.ggy body trembling, every nerve tense with antic.i.p.ation, slant eyes eagerly questioning as she whimpered her impatience.

Taking the dog by her plaited collar of caribou hide, to it Julie knotted a rope and led her into the Mission where McCain, Jules and Pere Breton waited.

"Fleur will be good and not hurt Jean. She must not leap on his bed. He is very sick."

Seeming to sense that something was about to happen having to do with Marcel, Fleur met the girl's hand with a swift lick of her tongue. With the rope trailing behind, the end of which Jules and McCain seized to control the dog in case she became unmanageable, Julie Breton opened the door of Marcel's room, where with fever-flushed face the unconscious man lay on a low cot, one arm hanging limply to the floor. When the husky saw the motionless figure, she p.r.i.c.ked her ears, thrusting her muzzle forward, and sniffed, and as her nose revealed the glad news that here at last lay the lost Jean Marcel, she raised her head and yelped wildly.

Then swiftly muzzling Marcel's inert body she started to spring upon the bunk to wake him, when Julie Breton's arms circled her neck and aided by the drag on the rope, checked her.

"Down, Fleur! No! No! You must not hurt Jean."

Seeming to sense that the mute Marcel was not to be roughly played with, the intelligent dog, whimpering like one of her puppies, caressed the free hand of the sick man, then, ignoring the weight on the rope dragging her back, she strained forward to reach his neck with her tongue, for his head was turned from her. But Jean Marcel did not return her caress.

Puzzled by his indifference, then sensing that harm had come to the unconscious Marcel, the dog raised her head over the cot and rocked the room with a wail of sorrow.

The wounded man sighed and turning, moaned:

"They took Fleur and now they take Julie. There is nothing left--nothing left!"

At the words, the nose of the overjoyed dog reached the hot face of Marcel, but his eyes did not see her.

Again Julie's strong arms circled Fleur's neck, restraining her. The slant eyes of the husky looked long into the pale face which showed no recognition; then she quietly sat down, resting her nose on his arm. And for hours, with Julie seated beside her, Fleur kept vigil beside the bed, until the priest and McCain insisted on the dog's removal.

When Jules brought a crying puppy outside the window of the sick room, for a time Fleur listened to the call of her offspring without removing her eyes from Marcel's face. But at length, maternal instinct temporarily conquered the desire to watch by the stricken man. Her unweaned puppies depended on her for life and for the moment mother love prevailed. With a final caress of the limp hand of Marcel, reluctantly, with head down and tail dragging, she followed Julie to the stockade.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

FROM THE FAR FRONTIERS

For days Marcel's youth and strength battled with the fever aggravated by infection in the deep wound. All that Gillies and Pere Breton could do for the stricken man was done, but barring the simple remedies which stock the medicine chest of a post in the far north and the most limited knowledge of surgery possessed by the factors, the recovery of a patient depends wholly upon his vitality and const.i.tution. With medical aid beyond reach, men die or fight back to health through the toughness of their fiber alone.

There was a time when Jean Marcel journeyed far toward the dim hills of a land from which there is no trail home for the feet of the _voyageur_.

There were nights when Julie Breton sat with her brother and Jules, or McCain, stark fear in their hearts that the sun would never again lift above the Whale River hills for Jean Marcel, never again his daring paddle flash in sunlit white-water, or his snow-shoes etch their webbed trail on the white floor of the silent places.

And during these days the impatient Wallace chafed with longing for the society of Julie whose pity for the sick man had made of her an indefatigable nurse. A few words in the morning and an hour or two at night was all the time she allotted the man to whom she had given her heart.

To the demand of the Inspector in the presence of Pere Breton that Julie should subst.i.tute a Cree woman as nurse, she had replied:

"He has no one but us. His people are dead. He has been like a brother to me. I can do no less than care for him, poor boy!"

"Yes," added Pere Breton, "he is as my son. Julie is right," and added, with a smile, "you two will have much time in the future to see each other."

So Wallace had been forced to make the best of it.

By the time that the steamer, _Inenew_, from Charlton Island, appeared with the English mail, and the supplies and trade-goods for the coming year, Jean Marcel had fought his way back from the frontiers of death.

So relieved seemed the girl, who had given lavishly of her young strength, that she allowed Mrs. Gillies to take her place in the sick room while she spent with Wallace the last days of his stay at Whale River.

Once more the post people saw the lovers constantly together and more than one head shook sadly at the thought of the one who had lost, lying hurt, in heart and body, on a cot at the Mission, while another took his place beside Julie Breton.

At last, the steamer sailed for Fort George and no one in the group gathered at the landing doubted that the heart of Julie Breton went with it when they saw the light in her dark eyes as she bade the handsome Wallace good-bye.

It was an open secret now, communicated by Wallace to the factor, that he was to become a Catholic that autumn, and in June take Julie Breton as a bride away to East Main.

During the tense days when the fever heightened and the life of Jean Marcel hung on the turn of a leaf, there had been no repet.i.tion of the visit of Fleur to the sick room. But so loudly did she wail her complaint at her enforced absence from the man battling for his life, so near in the Mission house, that it was necessary to confine her with her puppies at a distance.

Once again conscious of his surroundings and rapidly gaining strength, Marcel insisted on seeing his dog. So, daily, under watchful guard, Fleur was taken into the room, often with a clumsy puppy, round and fluffy, who alternately nibbled with needle-pointed milk-teeth at Jean's extended hand, making a great to-do of snarling in mock anger, or rolled squealing on its back on the floor, while Fleur sprawled contentedly by the cot, tail beating the floor, love in her slant eyes for the master who now had found his voice, whose face once more shone with the old smile, which was her life.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

RENUNCIATION

August drew to a close. The post clearing and the beach at Whale River were again bare of tepee and lodge of the hunters of fur who had repaired to their summer camps where fish were plentiful, to wait for the great flights of snowy geese that the first frosts would drive south from Arctic Islands. Daily the vitality and youth of Marcel were giving him back his strength, and no remonstrance of the Bretons availed to keep him quiet once his legs had mastered the distance to the trade-house. Except for a slight pallor in the lean face and the loss of weight, due to confinement, to his friends he was once more the Jean Marcel they had known, but for weeks, a sudden twisting of his firm mouth marking a twinge in the back, recalled only too vividly to them all the knife-thrust of Lelac.

When, rid of the fever, and again conscious, Jean had become strong enough to talk, he repeatedly voiced his grat.i.tude to Julie for her loyalty as nurse, but she invariably covered his mouth with her hand refusing to hear him. Grown stronger and sitting up, he had often repeated his thanks, raising his face to hers with a twinkle in his dark eyes, in the hope that her manner of suppressing him might be continued; but she had tantalizingly refused to humor the convalescent.

"I shall close your mouth no longer, Monsieur," she had said with a grimace. "You will soon be the big, strong Jean Marcel we have always known and must not expect to be a helpless baby forever. And now that you can use your right arm, I shall no longer cut up your fish."

"But it is with great pain that I move my arm, Julie," he had protested in a feeble effort to enlist her sympathy and so prolong the personal ministrations he craved.

"Bah! When before has the great Jean Marcel feared pain? It is only a ruse, Monsieur. I am too busy, now that you can help yourself, to treat you as a child."

And so, reluctantly, Marcel had resigned himself to doing without the aid of the nimble fingers of Julie Breton. The fierce bitterness in his heart, which, before the fight on the beach with the Lelacs had made of the days an endless torment, gave place, on his recovery, to a state of mind more sane. Deep and lasting as was his wound, the realization of the girl's devoted care of him had, during his convalescence, numbed the old rawness. Grat.i.tude and his innate manhood shamed Marcel into a suppression of his grief and the showing of a brave face to Julie Breton and the little world of Whale River. In his extremity she had stood staunchly by his side. She had been his friend, indeed. He deserved no more. And now in his prayers, for he was a devout believer in the teachings of Pere Breton, he asked for her happiness.

One evening found three friends, Julie, Jean Marcel and Fleur, again walking on the sh.o.r.e of the Great Whale in the mellow sunset. Romping with puppy awkwardness, Fleur's progeny roved near them. The hush of an August night was upon the land. Below, the young ebb ran silently without ripple. Not a leaf stirred in the scrub edging the trail. The dead sun, master artist, had limned the heavens with all the varied magic of his palette, and the gray bay, often sullenly restless under low-banked clouds, or blanketed with mist, now reached out, a shimmering floor, to the rim of the world.

In silence the two, mute with the peace of the moment, watched the heightening splendor of the western skies. Disdaining the alluring scents of the neighboring scrub, which her puppies were exploring, Fleur kept to Marcel's side where her nose might find his hand, for she had not forgotten the days of their recent separation.

"What you did for me I can never repay." Marcel broke the silence, his eyes on the White Bear Hills, sapphire blue on southern horizon.

The girl turned impatiently.