THE CAMP ON THE GHOST
Although the stinging winds with swirls of fine snow were already
driving down the valleys, and nightly the ice filmed the eddies and the
backwaters, yet the swift river remained open to the speeding canoe
until, one frosty morning, Marcel waked in camp at the Conjuror's Falls
to find that the ice had over-night closed in on the quiet reaches of
the Ghost just above, shackling the river for seven months against canoe
travel.
Caching his boat and supplies on spruce saplings, he circled each peeled
trunk with a necklace of large inverted fish-hooks, to foil the raids of
that arch thief and defiler of caches, the wolverine. That night he
reached the camp of his partners.
Antoine Beaulieu and Joe Piquet, like Marcel, had lost their immediate
families in the plague, and the year before, had been only too glad to
join the Frenchman in a trapping partnership of mutual advantage. For
while Marcel, son of the former Company head man, with a schooling at
the Mission, and a skill and daring as canoeman and hunter, beyond their
own, was looked upon as leader by the half-breeds, Antoine was a good
hunter, while Joe Piquet's manual dexterity in fashioning snow-shoes,
making moccasins and building bark canoes rendered him particularly
useful. Marcel's feat of the previous spring in finding the headwaters
of the Salmon and his appearance at Whale River with a pure bred Ungava
husky, to the amazement of the Crees, had increased his influence with
his partners; but his determination to go south after his dog when it
was already high time for the three men to start for their
trapping-grounds had left them in a sullen mood. Because they could use
them, if he did not return from the south, they had packed his supplies
over the portages of the Whale and up the Ghost to their camp, but had
netted no extra whitefish for the dog they felt he would not bring home.
That night they sat long over the fire in the shack they had built the
autumn previous, listening to Marcel's tale of the rescue of Fleur and
of the great goose grounds of the south coast.
In the morning Jean waked with the problem of a supply of fish for Fleur
and himself troubling him, for one of the precepts of Andre Marcel had
been, "Save your fish for the tail of the winter, for no one knows where
the caribou will be." Down at Conjuror's Falls, he had cached less than
two months' rations for his dog, and they were facing seven months of
the long snows. To be sure, she could live on meat, if meat was to be
had, but a husky thrives on fish, and Marcel determined that she should
have it.
Confident of finding game plentiful, his partners, with the usual lack
of foresight of the Crees, had netted less than three months' supply of
whitefish and lake-trout. This emergency store Marcel knew would be
consumed by February, however plentiful the caribou proved to be, for
the Crees seldom possess the thrift to save against the possible spring
famine. So he determined to set his net at once.
Borrowing Joe's canoe, he packed it through the "bush" to a good fish
lake where he set the net under the young ice, and baited lines; then
taking Fleur, he started cruising out locations for his trap-lines in
new country, far toward the blue hills of the Salmon watershed, where
game signs had been thick the previous spring.
Toward the last of October when the snow began to make deep, Fleur's
education as a sled-dog began. Already the fast growing puppy was
creeping up toward one hundred pounds in weight, and soon, under the
kind but firm tutelage of the master, was as keen to be harnessed for a
run as a veteran husky of the winter trails.
When he had set and baited his traps over a wide circle of new country
to the north, Jean returned to his net and lines, and at the end of ten
days had a supply of trout and whitefish for Fleur, which he cached at
the lake. On his return, Antoine and Joe derided his labors when the
caribou trails networked the muskegs, but Marcel ignored them.
It looked like a good winter for game. Snow-shoe rabbits were plentiful
and wherever their runways led in and out of the scrub-spruce and fir
covers, there those furred assassins of the forest, the fox and the
lynx, the fisher and the marten, were sure to make their
hunting-grounds. During November and December, when pelts are at their
best, the men made a harvest at their traps. The caribou were still on
the barrens feeding on the white moss from which they scraped the snow
with their large, round-toed hoofs, and the rabbit snares furnished stew
whenever the trappers craved a change from caribou steaks. But no Indian
will eat rabbit as a regular diet while he can get red meat. This
varying hare of the north, which, so often, in the spring, from Labrador
to the Yukon, stands between the red trapper and starvation, has a
flavor which quickly palls on the taste, and never quite seems to
satisfy hunger. The Crees often speak of "starving on rabbits."
During these weeks following the trap-lines, learning the ways of the
winter forest after a puppyhood on the coast, as Fleur grew in bulk and
strength, so her affection deepened for Jean Marcel. Now nearly a year
old, she easily drew the sled loaded with the meat of a caribou into
camp, on a beaten trail. At night in the tent Marcel had pitched and
banked with snow, as a half-way camp on the round of his trap-lines, she
would sit with hairy ears pointed, watching his every movement, looking
unutterable adoration as he scraped his pelts, stretching them on frames
to dry or mended his clothes and moccasins. Then, before he turned in to
his plaited, rabbit-skin blankets, warmer by far than any fur robes
known in the north, Fleur invariably demanded her evening romp. Taking a
hand in her jaws which never closed, she would lift her lips, baring her
white fangs in a snarl of mimic anger, as she swung her head from side
to side, until, seizing her, Jean rolled her on her back, while rumbles
and growls from her shaggy throat voiced her delight.
Back at the main camp, Fleur, true to her breed, merely tolerated the
presence of Antoine and Joe, indifferent to all offers of friendship.
Moving away at their approach, she suffered neither of them to place
hand upon her. At night she slept outside in the snow, where the thick
mat of fine fur under the long hair rendered her immune to cold.
And all these weeks Jean Marcel was fighting out his battle with self.
Always, the struggle went ceaselessly on--the struggle with his heart
to give up Julie Breton. Reason though he would, that he had nothing to
give her, while this great man of the Company had everything, his love
for the girl kept alive the embers of hope. He carried the memory of her
sweetness over the white trails by day and at night again wandered with
her in the twilight as in the days before the figure of Wallace darkened
his life.
As Christmas approached, Jean wondered whether Wallace would spend it in
Whale River, and was glad that they had not intended, because of the
great distance, to go back for the festivities at the post. Should he
ever see her again as Julie Breton? he asked himself. Wallace would
change his religion. Surely no man would balk at that, to get Julie. And
the spring would see them married. Well, he should go on loving her--and
Fleur; there was no one else.