FOR LOVE OF A MAN
It had been with the feeling of a heavy load loosed from his shoulders
that the Frenchman left the Ghost. Disgusted with the laziness and lack
of foresight of his partners in the autumn; through the strain and worry
of the winter he had gradually lost all confidence in their capacity to
fight through until spring brought back the fishing; and now this
robbery of his cache and the affair with Piquet had made him a free man.
For Antoine, the friend of his youth, ever easily led but at heart,
honest enough, he held only feelings of disgust; but with the
crooked-souled Piquet, henceforth it should be war to the knife. Knowing
that there were more beaver in the white valleys of the Salmon country,
Marcel faced with hope the March crust and the long weeks of the April
thaws, when rotting ice would bar the waterways and soggy snow, the
trails, to all travel. Somehow, he and Fleur would pull through and see
Julie Breton and Whale River again. Somehow, they would live, but it
meant a dogged will and day after day, many a white mile of drudgery for
himself and the dog he loved. Crawl starved and beaten into Whale
River--caught like a mink in a trap by the pinch of the pitiless
snows--no Marcel ever did, and he would not be the first.
The February dusk hung in the spruce surrounding the half-way camp of
Marcel beside a pond in the hills dividing the watershed of the Ghost
from the Salmon. For three days Jean had been picking up his traps
preparatory to making the break north to the beaver country. With a
light load, for Fleur could not haul much over her weight on a freshly
broken trail in the soft snow, the toboggan-sled stood before the tent
ready for an early start under the stars. From the smoke-hole of the
small tepee the sign of cooking rose straight into the biting air, for
there was no wind. But the half-ration of trout and beaver which was
simmering in the kettle would leave the clamoring stomach of the man
unsatisfied. With the three beaver he had brought from the north and the
fish and caribou from the Ghost, Marcel still had food for himself and
his dog for a fortnight, but he was not an Indian and was husbanding his
scanty store. Fleur had already bolted her fish, more supper than her
master allowed himself, for Fleur was still growing fast and her need
was greater.
Disliking the smoke from the fire which often filled the tepee, Fleur
slept outside under the low branches of a fir, and when it snowed,
waked warm beneath a white blanket. For, enured to the cold, the husky
knows no winter shelter and needs none, sleeping curled, nose in bushy
tail, in a hole dug in the snow, through the bitter nights without frost
bite.
As the dusk slowly blanketed the forest, here and there stars pricked
out of the dark canopy of sky to light gradually the white hills rolling
away north to the dread valleys of the forbidden land of the Crees.
Later, as the night deepened, the Milky Way drew its trail across the
swarming stars. In the pinch of the strengthening cold, spruce and
jack-pine snapped in the encircling forest, while the ice of lake and
river, contracting, boomed intermittently, like the shot of distant
artillery.
On the northern horizon, the camp-fires of the giants flickered and
glowed, fitfully; then, at length, loosing their bonds, snake-like
ribbons of light writhed and twisted from the sky-line to the high
heavens, in grotesque traceries; and across the white wastes of the
polar stage swept the eerie "Dance of the Spirits."
For a space Jean stood outside the tepee watching the never-ceasing
wonder of the aurora; then sending Fleur to her bed, sought his
blankets. But no sting of freezing air might keep the furred and
feathered marauders of the night from their hunting; for faintly on the
tense silence floated the "hoo-hoo!" of the snowy owl, patrolling the
haunts of the wood-mice. Out of the murk of a cedar swamp rose the
scream of a starving lynx. Presently, over star-lit ridges drifted the
call of a mating timber wolf.
The Northern Lights had dimmed and faded. Sentinel stars alone guarded
the white solitudes, when, from the gloom of the spruce out into the
lighted snow moved a dark shape. Noiselessly the muffled racquettes of
the skulker advanced. As the figure crept nearer the tent, it suddenly
stopped, frozen into rigidity, head forward, as though listening. After
a space, it stirred again. Something held in the hands glinted in the
starlight, like steel. It was the action of a rifle, made bright by
wear.
When the creeping shape reached the banking of the tepee, again it
stopped, stiff as a spruce. The seconds lengthened into minutes. Then a
hand reached out to the canvas. In the hand was a knife. Slowly the keen
edge sawed at the frozen fabric. At last the tent was slit.
Leaning forward the hunter of sleeping men enlarged the opening and
pressed his face to the rent. Long he gazed into the darkened tepee.
Then withdrawing his hooded head, he shook it slowly as if in doubt.
Finally, as though decided on his course, he thrust the barrel of his
rifle through the opening and dropped his head as if to aim; when, from
the rear a gray shape catapulted into his back, flattening him on the
snow. As the weight of the dog struck the crouching assassin, his rifle
exploded inside the tent, followed by a scream of terror.
Again and again the long fangs of the husky slashed at the throat of the
writhing thing in the snow. Again and again the massive jaws snapped and
tore, first the capote, then the exposed neck, to ribbons. Then with
cocked rifle the dazed Marcel, waked by the gun fired in his ears,
reached them.
With difficulty dragging his dog from the crumpled shape, Marcel looked,
and from the bloodied face grimacing horribly in death above the mangled
throat, stared the glazed eyes of Joe Piquet.
"By Gar! You travel far for de grub and de _revanche_, Joe Piquet," he
exclaimed. Turning to the dog, snarling with hate of the prowling thing
she had destroyed, Jean led her away.
"Fleur, ma petite!" he cried, "she took good care of Jean Marcel while
he sleep. Piquet, he thought he keel us both in de tent. He nevaire see
Fleur under de fir." The great dog trembling with the heat of battle,
her mane stiff, yelped excitedly. "She love Jean Marcel, my Fleur; and
what a strength she has!" Rearing, Fleur placed her massive fore-paws
on Marcel's chest, whining up into his face; then seizing a hand in her
jaws, proudly drew him back to the dead man in the snow. There, raising
her head, as if in warning to all enemies of her master, she sent out
over the white hills the challenging howl of the husky.
When Jean Marcel had buried the frozen body of Joe Piquet in a drift
over the ridge, where the April thaws would betray him to the mercy of
his kind, the forest creatures of tooth and beak and claw, he started
back to the Ghost with Fleur, taking Piquet's rifle to be returned to
his people with his fur and outfit. Confident that Antoine had had no
part in the attempt to kill him and get his provisions, he wished
Beaulieu to know Piquet's fate, as Antoine would now in all probability
make for Whale River and could carry a message. Furthermore if anything
had by chance happened to Beaulieu, Marcel wished to know it before
starting north.
As Fleur drew him swiftly over the trail, ice-hard from much travelling,
Jean decided that if Antoine wished to fight out the winter in the
Salmon country, for the sake of their old friendship he would overlook
the half-breed's weakness under Piquet's influence, and offer to take
him.
Dawn was wavering in the gray east when Marcel reached the silent camp.
He called loudly to wake the sleeping man inside; but there was no
response.
Marcel's heavy eyebrows contracted in a puzzled look.
"Allo, Antoine!" Still no answer. Was he to find here more of the work
of Joe Piquet? he wondered, as he swung back the slab-door of the shack
and peered into the dim interior.
There in his bunk lay the half-breed.
"Wake up, Antoine!" Marcel cried, approaching the bunk; then the faint
light from the open door fell on the gray face of Antoine Beaulieu,
stiff in death.
"Tiens!" muttered Marcel. "Stabbed tru de heart w'en he sleep. Joe
Piquet, he t'ink to get our feesh and beaver and fur, den he tell dem at
Whale Riviere we starve out. Poor Antoine!"
Sick with the discovery, Jean sat beside the dead man, his head in his
hands. Bitterly now, he regretted that he had refused the hand of his
old friend in parting; that he had not taken him with him when he left
the Ghost. It was clear that before starting to stalk Marcel's camp,
Piquet had deemed it safer to seal the lips of Beaulieu forever as to
the fate of the man he planned to kill.
"Poor Antoine!" Marcel sadly repeated. Outside, Fleur, fretting at the
presence of death, whined to be off.
In the cold sunrise, Jean lashed the body of his boyhood friend, which
he had sewed in some canvas, on the food cache, that it might rest in
peace undefiled by the forest creatures, until on his return in May he
might give it decent burial. Beside it he placed the fur-packs, rifles
and outfits of the two men.
"Adieu, Antoine!" he called, waving his hand at the shrouded shape on
the cache, and turned north.