FOR LOVE OF A DOG
The spring trade at Whale River was nearing its end. One by one the
tepees in the post clearing disappeared as, each day, canoes of Cree
hunters started up-river for lakes of the interior, to net fish for the
coming winter. Already the umiaks of the Esquimos peopled with women and
children had followed the ebb-tide down to the great Bay, bound for
their autumn hunting camps along the north coast.
When Jean Marcel had traded his fur and purchased what flour, ammunition
and other supplies he needed to carry him through the long snows of the
coming winter, he found that a substantial balance remained to his
credit on the books of the Company; a nest egg, he hoped, for the day
when, perchance, as a _voyageur_ of the Company with a house at the
post, he might stand with Julie at his side and receive the blessing of
the good Pere Breton. But Jean realized that that day was far away.
Before he might hope to be honored by the Company with the position and
trust his father had so long enjoyed, he knew he must prove his mettle
and his worth; for the Company crews and dog-runners, entrusted with
the mails, the fur-brigades and Company business in general, are men
chosen for their intelligence, stamina and skill as canoemen and
dog-drivers.
When he had packed his last load of winter supplies from the trade-house
to the Mission, he said with a laugh to Julie:
"Julie, we have made a good start, you and I. We have credit of three
hundred dollars with the Company."
The olive skin of Julie Breton flushed to the dusky crown of hair, but
she retorted with spirit:
"You are counting your geese before they are shot, M'sieu Jean. Merci!
But I am very happy with Pere Henri."
Pere Breton's laugh interrupted Jean's reply. "Yes, my son. Julie is
right. You are too young, you two, to think of anything but your souls."
"Some day, Julie, I will be a Company man and then you will listen to
Jean Marcel," and the lad who had cherished the memory of the girl's
oval face through the long winter and taken it with him into the dim,
blue Ungava hills, left the Mission with head erect and swinging stride.
"Jean, when are you going back to the bush?" inquired Gillies, as Marcel
entered the trade-house.
"My partners and I go next week, maybe."
"Well, I want you to take a canoe to Duck Island for me. We're
short-handed here, and you have just come down that coast. I promised
some Huskies to leave a cache of stuff there this summer."
Marcel's dark features reddened with pride. He had been put in charge of
a canoe bound on Company business. His crossing to the Big Salmon had
marked him at Whale River as a canoeman of daring--a chip of the old
block, worthy of the name Marcel.
"Bien! M'sieu Gillies, when do we start?"
"To-day, after dinner!"
Returning to the Mission elated, Marcel ate his dinner, made up his pack
while they wished him "Bon-voyage!" then went out to the stockade.
At the gate he was met simultaneously by the impact of a shaggy body and
the swift licks of an eager tongue. Then Fleur circled him at full
speed, yelping her delight, while she worked off the excitement of
seeing her playmate again, until, at length, she trotted up and nosed
his hand, keen for the daily rubbing of her ears which drew from her
deep throat grateful mutterings of content.
"I leave my petite chienne for a few days," he whispered into a hairy
ear. "She will be a good dog and obey Ma'm'selle Julie, who will feed
her?"
The puppy broke away and ran to the gate, turning to him with pricked
ears as she whined for the daily stroll into the scrub after snow-shoe
rabbits.
"Non, ma petite! We walk not to-day!" He stroked the slate-gray back
which trembled with her desire for a run with the master, then circling
her shaggy neck with his arms, his face against hers, while she fretted
as though she knew Jean was leaving her, said: "A'voir, Fleur!" and
closed the gate.
She stood grieving, her black nose thrust between the slab pickets, the
slant eyes following Marcel's back until he disappeared. Then she raised
her head and, in the manner of her kind, voiced her disappointment in a
long howl. And the wail of his puppy struck with strange insistence upon
the ears of Jean Marcel--like a premonition of misfortune which the
future held for him and which he often recalled in the weeks to come.
As the canoe of the Company journeyed through the Strait of the Spirit,
flocks of gray geese, which were now leading their broods out to the
coast islands from the muskegs of the interior, rose ahead, to sail away
in their geometric formations, while clouds of pin-tail and black duck
patrolled the low beaches.
Jean left his cargo for the Huskies in a stone cache and running into a
south-wester, while homeward bound, did not reach Whale River for a
fortnight. As he approached the post, he made out at the log landing
the Company steamer _Inenew_, loaded with trade goods from the depot at
Charlton Island. Through the clearing, now almost bare of tepees, for
the trade was over, he walked to the Mission. The door was opened by
Julie Breton.
"Bon-jour, Ma'm'selle Breton!" and he seized the unresponsive hand of
the girl.
"I am glad to see you home safely, Jean." Something in the face and
voice of the girl checked him.
"What is the matter, Julie?" he asked. "Pere Henri; he is not ill?"
"No, Jean. Pere Henri is well, but----"
"You do not seem glad to see me again, Julie!"
"I am glad. You know that----"
"Well," he flung out, hurt at the girl's constrained manner, "I'll go
and see someone who will welcome Jean Marcel with no sober face----"
"Jean!" she said as he turned away.
"What is it, Ma'm'selle Breton?" and he smiled into her troubled eyes.
"Fleur has missed me, I know. She will give Jean Marcel a true welcome
home."
"Jean--she is not there--they stole her!"
The face of Jean Marcel twisted with pain.
"Mon Dieu! Stole my Fleur--my puppy?"
"Yes, they took her from the stockade, two nights ago--two men who came
up the coast after dogs."
With face buried in his arms to hide the tears misting his eyes, he
leaned against the door jamb, while the girl rested a sympathetic hand
on his shoulder.
"Poor Jean!"
"I worked so hard to get her. I loved that puppy, Julie; she was my
child," he groaned.
"I know, Jean, how you feel; after what you have been through--to have
lost her----"
"But I have not lost her!" the boy exclaimed fiercely, drawing a deep
breath and facing the girl with features set like stone. "I have not
lost her, Julie Breton! I will follow them and bring back my dog if I
have to trail those men to Rupert House."
The tears had gone and in the eyes of Jean Marcel was a glint she had
never known--a glitter of hate for the men who had taken his dog, so
intense, so bitter, that she thrilled inwardly as she gazed at his
transformed face. Instinctively, Julie Breton knew that the lad who
faced her was no longer the playmate of old to be treated as a boy, but
the possessor of a high courage and unbreakable will that men in the
future would reckon with.
Jean entered the trade-house to find Gillies in conversation with a tall
stranger, who, Jules whispered, was Mr. Wallace, the new inspector of
the East Coast posts, who had come with the steamer.
"A few days after you left, Jean," explained Gillies, "two half-breeds
dropped in here with the story that they had travelled up the coast from
Rupert House to buy dogs from the Huskies. There were no dogs for sale
here, and they seemed pretty sore at missing the York-boat bound south
with the dogs bought by the Company for East Main and Fort George. Why,
we didn't know, for they couldn't get any of those dogs. They were a
weazel-faced, mean-looking pair and when Jules found them feeding two of
our huskies one day, there was trouble."
"What did they do to you, Jules?" asked Jean, smiling faintly at the big
Company bowman.
"What did Jules do to them, you mean," broke in Angus McCain.
"Well," continued Gillies, "we got outside in time to see Jules break
his paddle over the head of one and pile into the other who had a knife
out and looked mean.
"Then I kicked them out of the post. They left that night with your dog,
for the next day at Little Bear Island they passed a canoe of
goose-hunters bound for Whale River and the Indians noticed the puppy
who seemed to be muzzled and tied."
During the recital, Marcel walked the floor of the trade-house, his
blood hot with rage.
"French half-breeds, M'sieu Gillies, or Scotch?" he asked.
"Scotch, Jean, medium sized; one had lost half an ear and the other had
a scar on his chin and the first finger gone on his right hand. But
you're not going after them, lad; they've two days' start on you and
it's August!"
"M'sieu Gillies, I took de _longue traverse_ for dat dog. She was de
best pup in dees place. I love dat husky, M'sieu. I start to-night."
The import and finality of Jean's words startled his hearers.
"Why, you won't make your trapping-grounds before the freeze-up, if you
head down the coast now. You're crazy, man! Besides, they are two days
ahead of you, to start with, and with two paddles will keep gaining,"
objected the factor.
"M'sieu Gillies," the boy ignored the factor's protest, "will you geeve
me letter of credit for de Company posts?"
"Why, yes, Jean, you've got three hundred dollars credit here, but, man,
stop and think! You can't overhaul those breeds alone, and if they
belong in the East Main or Rupert River country they'll be back in the
bush by the time you reach the posts, even if you can trail them that
far. It's three hundred and fifty miles to Rupert House; you might be a
month on the way."
Jean Marcel shook his head doggedly, determination written in the
stone-hard muscles of his dark face. Then he suddenly demanded of the
factor:
"What would my father, Andre Marcel, do eef he leeved? Because of de
freeze-up would he geeve hees pup to dose dog-stealer? I ask you dat,
M'sieu?"
Gillies' honest eyes frankly met the questioner's.
"Andre Marcel was the best canoeman on this coast, and no man ever did
him a wrong who didn't pay." The factor hesitated.
"Well, M'sieu!" demanded Jean.
"Andre Marcel," Gillies continued, "would have followed the men who
stole his dog down this coast and west to the Barren Grounds."
Jules Duroc nodded gravely as he added: "By Gar! Andre Marcel, he would
trail dose men into de muskegs of Hell."
"Well," said Jean, smiling proudly at the encomiums of his father's
prowess, "Jean Marcel, hees son, will start to-night."
Argument was futile to dissuade Marcel from his mad venture. His
partners of the previous winter who had waited impatiently for his
return refused to delay longer their start for Ghost River and left at
once.
Then Jules took Marcel aside and quietly talked to him as would a
brother.
"Jean, you stay here wid Ma'm'selle Julie till de steamer go. Dat M'sieu
Wallace, he sweet on you' girl w'en you were up de coast. You stay till
he leeve."
For this Jean had an outward shrug of contempt, but the rumored
attentions of Wallace to Julie Breton, during his absence, sickened his
heart with fear. Was he to lose her, too, as well as Fleur?
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 embarrassment
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 passed 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 shore, 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 Godspeed, 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 shore 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 shores of Big Island, he knew he had won a deserved rest, so
went ashore, cooked some food and slept.