The Whelps of the Wolf Part 6

Before supper, at the Mission, Pere Breton urged him to return to his trapping grounds and spare himself the toil of a hopeless quest down the coast in the face of the coming winter. Julie was adding her objections to her brother's, when a knock on the door checked her. Her face colored slightly as Jean glanced up, when she turned to the door.

"Bon soir, Monsieur!" she greeted the newcomer, a note of embarra.s.sment in her voice.

"Good evening, Mademoiselle. I hope I'm not late?" And Inspector Wallace entered the room.

The Inspector, a handsome, well-built man of thirty-five, was dressed in the garb of civilization and wore shoes, a rarity at Whale River. Chief of the East Coast posts of the Great Company, he had been sent the year previous, from western Ontario, and put in command of men older in years and experience who had pa.s.sed their lives in the far north. And naturally much resentment had manifested itself among the traders. But that the new chief officer looked and acted like a man of ability, the disgruntled factors had been forced to admit.

As Wallace sat conversing of the great world outside with Pere Breton, who was evidently much pleased by his attentions to Julie, he seemed to Jean Marcel to embody all that the young Frenchman lacked. How, indeed, he asked himself, could he now aspire to the love of Julie Breton when so great a man chose to smile upon her?

Wallace seemed surprised at the presence of a humble Company hunter as a member of the priest's family, but Pere Breton privately informed him that Jean was as a son and brother at the Mission.

While the black eyes of Julie flashed in response to the admiring glances of Wallace, Jean Marcel ate in silence his last meal at Whale River for many a long week, torn by his longing for the dog carried down the coast in the canoe of the thieves and by the hopelessness of his love for this girl who was manifestly thrilling to the compliments of a man who knew the world of men and cities, who had seen many women, yet found this rose of the north fair. But as he ate in silence, the young Frenchman made a vow that should this man, who was taking her from him, treat her innocence lightly, Inspector though he was, he should feel the cold steel of the knife of Jean Marcel.

After the meal, as Jean prepared to leave, Pere Breton renewed his protests against the trip, but in vain. If he had luck, Marcel insisted, he could beat the "freeze-up" home; if not, he would travel up the coast, later, on the ice, or--well, it did not much matter what became of Jean Marcel.

So, with the letter of the factor, on which he could draw supplies at the southern posts, Jean Marcel shook the hands of his friends and, sliding his canoe into the ebb tide, started south as the dying sun gilded the flat Bay to the west. He waved his hand in farewell to the group of Company men on the sh.o.r.e, when he saw above them the figures of Julie Breton and the priest. As Julie held aloft something white, she and her brother were joined by a man. It was Inspector Wallace. Jean swung his paddle to and fro, in response to Julie's G.o.dspeed, then dropping to his knees, drove the craft swiftly down-stream on the long pursuit which might take him four hundred miles down the coast to the white-waters of the great Rupert and beyond, he knew not where. And with him he carried the thought that Julie, his Julie, would daily, for a week, see this great man of the Company. It was a heavy heart that Marcel that night took down to the sea.

With the vision of Fleur, strangely sensing the impending separation from her master, as her wail of despair rose from the stockade the night he left her to go north, constantly before his eyes, Jean Marcel reached the coast and turned south. The thought of his puppy muzzled and bound in the canoe two days ahead of him lent power to every lunge of his paddle. While the knowledge that, back at Whale River, instead of walking the river sh.o.r.e in the long twilight with Jean Marcel, as he had dreamed, Julie would have Wallace at her side, added to the viciousness of his stroke. The sea was flat and when at daylight he saw looming ahead the sh.o.r.es of Big Island, he knew he had won a deserved rest, so went ash.o.r.e, cooked some food and slept.

CHAPTER VII

THE LONG TRAIL TO THE SOUTH COAST

A day's hard paddle past Big Island the dreaded Cape of the Four Winds thrust its bold b.u.t.tresses far out into the sea toward the White Bear, and Marcel knew that wind here meant days of delay, for no canoe could round this grim headland feared by all _voyageurs_, except in fair weather. So, after a few hours' sleep, he toiled all day down the coast and at midnight had put the gray cape behind him.

Two days later when Marcel went ash.o.r.e on the Isle of Graves of the Esquimos, to boil his kettle, he found, to his delight, a Fort George goose-boat on the same errand. The Crees who had just left the post to shoot the winter's supply of gray and snowy geese, or "wavies," as they are called from their resemblance in flight to a white banner waving in the sun, had met, two nights before off the mouth of Big River, the canoe he was following. The dog-thieves, who were strangers, did not stop at the post, but had continued south.

With two paddles they were not holding their lead, he laughed to himself, but were coming back. If he hurried he would overhaul them before they reached Rupert. He did not know the Rupert River, and if once they started inland he would be caught by the "freeze-up" in a strange country, so he continued on late into the night.

Then followed day after day of endless toil at the paddle, for he knew he must travel while the weather held. He could not hope to make Rupert, or even East Main before the wind changed; which might mean idling for days on a beach pounded by seas in which no canoe could live. At times, with a stern breeze, he rigged a piece of canvas to a spruce pole and sailed. But one thought dominated him as mile after mile of the gray East Coast slid past; the thought of having his puppy once more in his canoe, fretting at the gulls and ducks and geese, as he headed north.

Only through necessity did he stop to shoot geese, whose gray and white legions were gathering on the coast for the annual migration. At dawn the "gou-luk!" of the gray ganders marshalling their families out to the feeding grounds, which once sent his blood leaping, now left him cold.

He was hunting bigger game, and his heart hungered for his puppy, beaten and half-starved, in all likelihood, travelling somewhere ahead down that bleak coast in the canoe of two men who did not know that close on their heels followed an enemy as dogged, as relentless, as a wolf on the trail of an old caribou abandoned by the herd.

And so, after days of ceaseless dip and swing, dip and swing, which at night left his back and arms stiff and his fingers numb, Jean Marcel turned into the mouth of the East Main River and paddled up to the post, where he learned that the canoe of the half-breeds had not been seen, and that no hunters of their description traded there. So he turned again to the Bay and headed south for Rupert House. Off the Wild Geese Islands he met what he had for days been dreading, the first September north-wester, and was driven ash.o.r.e. For the following three days he rested and hunted geese, and when the storm whipped itself out, went on, and at last, crossing Boatswain's Bay, rounded Mount Sherrick and paddled up Rupert Bay to the famous old post, which, since the days of the Merry Monarch and his favorite, Prince Rupert, the first Governor of the "Company of Merchants-Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay," has guarded the river mouth--an uninterrupted history of two centuries and a half of fair dealing with the red fur-hunters of Rupert Land.

"So you're the son of Andre Marcel? Well, well! Time does fly! Why, Andre and I made many a camp together in the old days. There was a man, my lad!"

Jean straightened his wide shoulders in pride at this praise of his father by Alec Cameron, factor at Rupert. When he had explained the object of his long journey south in the fall, the latter raised his bushy eyebrows in amazement.

"You mean to tell me that you paddled from Whale River in fifteen days, after a dog?"

"Oui, M'sieu Cameron."

"Well, you didn't waste the daylight or the moon either. You're sure a son of Andre Marcel. It must be a record for a single paddle; and all for a pup, eh?"

"Oui, all for a pup!"

"You deserve to get that dog. Now, these half-breeds you describe dropped in here in June behind the Mista.s.sini brigade, and traded their fur. Then they started north after dogs."

"Dey were onlee a day ahead of me up de coast."

"Queer I haven't seen 'em here yet. Pierre!" Cameron called to a Company man pa.s.sing the trade-house. "Have those two Mista.s.sini strangers who went north in June, got back yet?"

"No, but Albert meet dem in Gull Bay two day back. Dey have one pup dey trade from Huskee!"

"There you are, Marcel! Your men crossed over to Hannah Bay to hunt geese. They'll be here in a week or two on their way up-river. You wait here and we'll get your dog when they show up."

"T'anks, M'sieu Cameron!" The dark eyes of Jean Marcel snapped. At last he was closing in on his quarry. "I weel go to Hannah Bay now and get my dog."

"Two to one, lad! They may get the best of you, and I've no men to spare; they're all away goose hunting. You'd better wait here."

"M'sieu, Andre Marcel would go alone and tak' his dog. I, hees son, also weel tak' mine."

"Good Lord! Andre Marcel would have skinned them alive--those two. Well, good luck, Jean! but I don't like your tackling those breeds alone."

Jean shook hands with the factor.

"Bon-jour, M'sieu Cameron, and t'anks!"

"If you don't drop in here on your way back, give my regards to Gillies and his family, and be careful," said the factor as Marcel left him.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MEETING IN THE MARSHES

Two days later, after rounding Point Comfort, Marcel was crossing the mud-flats of Gull Bay. At last the stalk was on, for somewhere in the vast marshes of the Hannah Bay coast, camped the men he had followed four hundred miles to meet face to face and fight for his dog. Somewhere ahead, through the gray mist, back in the juniper and alder scrub beyond the wide reaches of tide-flats and goose-gra.s.s, was Fleur, a prisoner.

That night in camp at East Point, while he cleaned the action and bore of his rifle, the clatter of the geese in the muskeg behind the far lines of spruce edging the marshes, filled him with wonder. Never on the bold East Coast had he heard such a din of geese gathering for the long flight. At dawn, for it was windy, lines of gray Canadas pa.s.sing overhead bound out to the shoals, waked him with their clamor. The tide was low, and he carried his canoe across the mud-flats through flocks of plover, snipe and yellow-legs, feeding behind the ebb, while teal and black-duck swarmed along the beaches.

As he poled his canoe south through the shoals, he recalled the tales his father had told him of the marshes of Hannah Bay, the greatest breeding ground of the gray goose and black duck in all the wide north.

Everywhere along the bars and sand-spits the gray Canadas were idling, always with an erect, keen-eyed sentinel on guard. Farther out, white islands of snowy geese flashed in the sun, as here and there a "wavy"

rose on the water to flap his black-tipped wings. Just in from their Arctic breeding-grounds, they were lingering for a month's feast on toothsome south-coast goose-gra.s.s before seeking their winter home on the great Gulf two thousand miles away.

Slowly throughout the morning Marcel travelled along the mud-flats bared for miles by the retreating tide. At times the breeze carried to his ears the faint sound of firing, but there were goose-boats from Moose and Rupert House on the coast, and it meant little. That night as the tide covered the marshes he ran up a channel of the Harricanaw delta seeking a camp-ground on its higher sh.o.r.es.

Landing he was looking for drift-wood for his fire when suddenly he stopped.

"Ah! You have been here, my friends."