The Whelps of the Wolf Part 25

"Monsieur Jean Marcel, what I have done, I would do for any friend. I am weary of hearing you speak of it. Have you no eyes for the sunset the good G.o.d has given us? Let us speak of that."

He smiled as one smiles at a child.

"_Bien!_ We shall speak no more of it then, Ma'm'selle Breton. But this you shall hear. I am sorry that I acted like a boy about M'sieu Wallace.

You will forgive me?"

"There is nothing to forgive," she answered. "I know you were hurt. It was natural for you to feel the way you did."

"But I showed little of the man, Julie. I was hurt here," and he placed his hand on his heart, "and I was a child."

She smiled wistfully, slowly shaking her head. "I fear you were very like a man, Jean. But you are going away and I may not be here in the spring--may not see you for a long time--so I want to tell you now how proud I have been of you this summer."

He looked up quizzically.

"Yes, you have made a great name on the East Coast this summer, Jean Marcel. When you were ill the Crees talked of little else--of your travelling where no Indian had dared to go until you found the caribou; your winning, over those terrible Lelacs and proving your innocence; your fighting them with bare hands, because you knew no fear."

The face of Marcel reddened as the girl continued.

"You are brave and you have a great heart and a wise head, Jean Marcel; some day you will be a factor of the Company. Wherever I may be, I shall think of you and always be proud that you are my friend."

Inarticulate, numb with the torture of hopeless love, Marcel listened to Julie Breton's farewell.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

THE VOICE OF THE WINDIGO

When the first flight of snowy geese, southward bound, flashed in an undulating white cloud over Whale River, the canoe of Jean Marcel was loaded with supplies for a winter in the land of the Windigo. And in memory of Antoine Beaulieu, he was taking with him as comrade and partner the eighteen-year-old cousin of the dead man whose kinsmen had humbly made their amends for their stand against Marcel before the hearing. Young Michel Beaulieu, of stouter fibre than Antoine, had at length overcome his scruples against entering the land of dread, through his admiration for Marcel's daring and his confidence in the man whose reputation since the hearing and the fight with the Lelacs had been now firmly established with the Whale River Crees. When Marcel had repeatedly a.s.sured the boy that he had neither seen the trail of _Matchi Manito_, the devil, nor once heard the wailing of a giant Windigo through all the long snows of the past winter in the Salmon country, Michel's pride at the offer had finally conquered his fears. So leaving the puppy he had given Julie as the nucleus for a Mission dog-team, and presenting Gillies with another, Marcel packed the three remaining children of Fleur whom he had named in honor of his three staunch friends, Colin, Jules and Angus, into the canoe already deep with supplies, and gripping the hands of those who had a.s.sembled on the beach, eased the craft into the flood-tide.

"Good-bye and good luck, Jean!" called Gillies.

"De rabbit weel be few; net beeg cache of feesh before de freeze-up!"

urged the practical Jules.

"No fear, Jules. We ketch all de feesh en de lac," laughed Jean. Then his eyes sought Julie Breton's sober face as he said in French:

"I will not come back for Christmas, Julie. The pups will not be old enough for the trail."

With the conviction that he was saying good-bye to Julie Breton forever--that on his return in June, she would be far in the south with Wallace, he pushed off as she called, "_Bon voyage, Jean! Dieu vous benisse!_" (G.o.d bless you!)

When the paddles of Jean and Michel drove the boat into the stream, the whining Fleur, beholding her world moving away from her, plunged into the river after the _voyageurs_.

"Go back, Fleur!" ordered Jean sternly. "You travel de sh.o.r.e; de cano'

ees too full wid de pup." So the protesting Fleur turned back to follow the sh.o.r.e. The puppies, yet too young and clumsy to keep abreast of the tide-driven canoe, on the broken beach of the river, had to be freighted.

When the boat was well out in the flood, Marcel waved his cap with a last "A'voir!"

Far up-stream, a half-hour later, rhythmic flashes, growing swiftly fainter and fainter, until they faded from sight, marked for many a long moon the last of Jean Marcel.

September waned, and the laggard rear-guard of the brant and Hutchins geese, riding the first stinging northers, pa.s.sed south in the wake of the wavies. On the heels of September followed a week of mellow October days lulling the north into temporary forgetfulness of the menace of the bitter months to come. Then the unleashed winds from the Arctic freighted with the first of the long snows beat down the coast and river valleys, locking the land with ice. But far in the Windigo-haunted hills of the forbidden land of the Crees a man and a boy, snug in snow-banked tepee, laughed as the winds whined through November nights and the snow made deep in the timber, for their cache was heaped high with frozen trout, whitefish and caribou.

With the coming of the snow, the puppies, young as they were, soon learned that the life of a husky was not all mad pursuit of rabbit or wood-mouse and stalking of ptarmigan; not all rioting through the "bush," on the trail of some mysterious four-footed forest denizen; not alone the gulping of a supper of toothsome whitefish or trout, followed by a long nap curled in a cosy hole in the snow, gray noses thrust into bushy tails. Although their wolf-blood made them, at first, less amenable than the average husky puppy to the discipline of collar and traces, their great mother, through the force of her example as lead-dog and the swift punishment she meted out to any culprit, contributed as much as Jean's own efforts to the breaking of the puppies to harness.

Jules, the largest, marked like his mother with slate-gray patches on head and back was all dog; but the rogues, Colin and Angus, mottled with the lighter gray of their sire, and with his rangier build, inherited much of his wolf nature. Many a whipping from the long lash of plaited caribou hide, many a sharp nip from Fleur's white teeth, were required to teach the young wolves the manners of camp and trail; to bend their wild wills to the habit of instant obedience to the voice of Jean Marcel. But Fleur was a conscientious mother and under her stern tutelage and the firm but kind treatment of Jean,--who loved to rough and wrestle the puppies in the dry snow, rolling them on their backs and holding them helpless in the grip of his sinewy hands--as the s.h.a.ggy ruffians grew in the wisdom of trace and trail, so in their wild natures ripened love for the master who fed and romped with them, meting out punishment to him alone who had sinned.

In search of black and silver foxes, whose pelts, worth in the world of cities their weight in gold, are the chief inspiration of the red hunter's dreams, Jean had run his new trap-lines far in the valleys of the Salmon watershed. But to the increasing satisfaction of the still worried Michel, the sole noises of the night which had yet met his fearful ears, had been the scream of lynx, the occasional caterwauling of wolverine and the hunting chorus of timber wolves. But darkness still held potential terror for the lad in whom, at his mother's knee, had been instilled dread of the demon-infested bad-lands north of the Ghost, and he never camped alone.

January came with its withering winds, burning and cracking the faces of the hunters following their trap-lines; swirling with fine snow, which struck like shot, and stung like the lash of whips. Often when facing the drive of a blizzard even the hardy Fleur, wrinkling her nose with pain, would stop and turn her back on the needle-pointed barrage. At times when the fierce cold, freezing all moisture from the atmosphere, filled the air with powdery crystals of ice, the true sun, flanked by sun-dogs in a ringed halo, lifted above the shimmering barrens, dazzlingly bright.

One night when Jean and Michel, camped in the timber at the end of the farthest line of fox traps, had turned into their robes before a hot fire, in front of which in a snow hole they had stretched a shed tent both as windbreak and heat-reflector, a low wail, more sob than cry of night prowler, drifted up the valley.

"You hear dat?" whispered Michel.

The hairy throat of Fleur, burrowed in the snow close to the tent, rumbled like distant thunder.

Marcel, already fast drifting into sleep, muttered crossly:

"Eet ees de Windigo come to eat you, Michel."

Again upon the hushed valley under star-encrusted heavens where the borealis flickered and pulsed and streamed in fantastic traceries of fire, broke a wailing sob.

With a cry Michel sat up turning a face gray with fear to the man beside him. Again Fleur growled, her lifted nose sniffing the freezing air, to send her awakened puppies into a chorus of snarls and yelps.

Raised on an elbow, Marcel sleepily asked:

"What de trouble, Michel? You and Fleur hear de Windigo?"

"Listen!" insisted the boy. "I nevaire hear dat soun' before."

Silencing the dog, Jean pushed back his hood to free his ears, smiling into the blanched face of the wild-eyed boy beside him.

Shortly the noiseless night was marred by a sobbing moan, as if some stricken creature writhed under the torture of mangled flesh.

Marcel knew that neither wolf, lynx, nor wolverine--the "Injun-devil" of the superst.i.tious--was responsible for the sound. What could it be? he queried. No furred prowler of the night, and he knew the varied voices of them all, had such a m.u.f.fled cry. Puzzled and curious he left his rabbit-skin robes and stood with the terrified Michel beside the fire.

In an uproar, the dogs ran into the "bush" with manes bristling and bared fangs, to hurl the husky challenge down the valley at the invisible menace.

"Eet ees de Windigo! Dey tell me at Whale Riviere not to come een dees countree! De Windigo an' Matchi Manito ees loose here," whimpered Michel through chattering teeth.

Jean Marcel did not know what it was that made night horrible with its moaning but he intended to learn at once. The lungs behind that noise could be pierced by rifle bullet and the cold steel of his knife. There was not a creature in the north with which Fleur would not readily battle. He would soon learn if the hide of a Windigo was tough enough to turn the knife-like fangs of Fleur, and the bullets of his 30-30.

Seizing Michel by the shoulders he shook the boy roughly.

"I tell you, Michel, de devil dat mak' dat soun' travel on four feet.

You tie up de pup an' wait here. Fleur an' I go an' breeng back hees skin."