The Whelps of the Wolf Part 26

But the panic-stricken Michel would not be left alone, and when he had fastened the excited puppies, with shaking hands he drew his rifle from its skin case and joined Marcel.

Holding with difficulty on her rawhide leash the aroused Fleur leaping ahead in the soft footing, Marcel snow-shoed through the timber in the direction from which the sound had come.

After travelling some time they stopped to listen.

From somewhere ahead, seemingly but a few hundred yards down the valley, floated the eerie sobbing. Michel's gun slipped to the snow from his palsied hands.

Turning, Jean gripped the boy's arm.

"Why you come? You no good to shoot. De Windigo eat you w'ile you hunt for your gun."

Picking up the rifle, the boy threw off the mittens fastened to his sleeve by thongs, and gritting his teeth, followed Marcel and Fleur.

Shortly they stopped again to listen. Straight ahead through the spruce the moaning rose and fell. Fleur, frantic to reach the mysterious enemy, plunged forward dragging Marcel, followed by the quaking boy who held his c.o.c.ked rifle in readiness for the rush of beast or devil. Pa.s.sing through scrub, a small clearing opened up before them. Checking Fleur, Marcel peered through the dim light of the forest into the opening lit by the stars, when the clearing echoed with the uncanny sound.

Marcel's keen eyes strained across the star-lit snow into the murk beyond, as Michel gasped in his ears:

"By Gar! I see noding dere! Eet ees de Windigo for sure!"

But the Frenchman was staring fixedly at a clump of spruce on the opposite edge of the opening. As the unearthly sobbing rose again into the night, he loosed the maddened dog and followed.

They were close to the spruce, when a great gray shape suddenly rose from the snow directly in their path. For an instant a pair of pale wings flapped wildly in their faces. Then a squawk of terror was smothered as the fangs of Fleur struck at the feathered shape of a huge snowy owl. A wrench of the dog's powerful neck, and the ghostly hunter of the northern nights had made his last patrol, victim of his own curiosity.

With a loud laugh Jean turned to the dazed Michel:

"Tak' good look at de Windigo, Michel. My fox trap hold heem fas' w'ile he seeng to de star."

The amazed Michel stared at the white demon in the fox trap with open mouth. "I t'ink--dat h'owl--de Windigo for sure," he stuttered.

"I nevaire hear de h'owl cry dat way myself, Michel, but I know dat Fleur and my gun mak' any Windigo een dees countree look whiter dan dat bird. W'en we come near dees place I expect somet'ing een dat fox trap."

And strangely, through the remaining moons of the long snows, the sleep of the lad was not again disturbed by the wailing of Windigos seeking to devour a young half-breed Cree by the name of Michel Beaulieu.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

RAW WOUNDS

June once again found Marcel paddling into Whale River. The sight of the high-roofed Mission, where, in the past, he had known so much of joy and pain, quickened his stroke. He wondered whether she had gone away with Wallace at Christmas, or whether there would be a wedding when the trade was over and the steamer would take them to East Main. Avoiding the Mission until he had learned from Jules what he so longed to know, Marcel went up to the trade-house where he found Gillies and McCain. Too proud to speak of what was nearest his heart, he told his friends of his winter in the Salmon country. It had paid him well, his long portage from the Ghost, the previous September, to the untrapped valleys to the north. When, unlas.h.i.+ng his fur-pack, he tossed on the counter three glossy black-fox pelts and six skins of soft silver-gray, alone worth well over a thousand dollars, even at the low prices of the far north, the eyes of Gillies and Angus McCain bulged in amazement. Cross fox, shading from the black of the back and shoulder to rich mahogany, followed; dark sheeny marten--the Hudson's Bay sable of commerce--and thick gray pelts of the fisher. Otter, lynx and mink made up the balance of the fur.

"Great Scott! the Salmon headwaters must be alive with fur!" exclaimed Gillies examining the skins, "and most of them are prime."

"Dere ees much fur een dat country," laughed Jean, "eef de Windigo don'

ketch you, eh, Michel?"

Michel, proud of his part in so successful a winter and in having bearded the demons of the Salmon in their dens and lived to tell the tale, blushed at the memory of the snowy owl.

"This is the largest catch of fur traded in my time at Whale River, Jean," said Gillies. "What are you going to do with all your credit? You can't use it on yourself; you'll have to get married and build a shack here."

Blood darkened the bronzed face, but Marcel made no reply.

He had indeed wrung a handsome toll from the haunted hills, which, tabooed by Cree trappers for generations, were tracked by the padded feet of countless fur-bearers. After allowing Michel a generous interest in the fur, Marcel found that he had increased his credit at the post by over two thousand dollars, giving him in all a trade credit of twenty-six hundred dollars with the Company. He could in truth afford to marry and build a shack if he were made a Company servant, but the girl----Then he heard Gillies' voice.

"Jean, I want you and Angus to go up to the Komaluk Islands with a York boat. The whalers are getting the Husky trade which we ought to have.

They will ruin them with whiskey."

"Ver' well, M'sieu!"

Marcel drew a breath of relief. If she were not already married, he would be only too glad to go north--to be spared seeing Julie Breton made the wife of Wallace. Then, at last, Jules appeared.

After the customary hug, Jean drew the big head man outside, demanding in French:

"Is she here still? They were not married at Christmas? When do they marry?"

Jules shook his head. "A letter came by the Christmas mail. By the Company he was ordered at once to Winnipeg. He is there now and will not come this summer."

"And Julie, is she well?"

"Yes."

"When, then, will they marry?"

Jules shrugged his great shoulders. "Christmas maybe, perhaps next June.

No one knows."

Marcel was strangely elated at the news. Julie was not yet out of his life. She would be at Whale River on his return from the north. Even if he were held all summer she would be there as of old.

The welcome of Julie and Pere Breton at the Mission temporarily drove from Marcel's thoughts the coming separation. Far into the night the three friends talked while Julie's skillful fingers were busy with her trousseau. She spoke of the postponement of her wedding, due to the presence of Inspector Wallace at the headquarters of the Company at Winnipeg. Julie's olive skin flushed with her pride, as she said that he had been mentioned already as the next Chief Inspector. Wallace had already become a Catholic, but the uncertainty of the time of his return to the East Coast might cause the delay of the ceremony until the following June.

Marcel's hungry eyes did not leave the girl's face as she talked of her future--the future he had dreamed of sharing. But the wound was still raw and he was glad to escape the acute suffering which her nearness caused, by leaving Fleur and her puppies in Julie's care, and starting with McCain the following morning, in a York boat loaded with trade-goods, for the north coast.

In August the York boat returned from the Komaluk Islands and Jean drew his supplies for another winter on Big Salmon waters. To Gillies, who urged him to accept a regular berth, and put his team of half-breed wolves on the mail-route to Rupert, for the winter previous the scarcity of good dogs along the coast had been the cause of the Christmas mail not reaching Whale River until the second of January, Marcel turned a deaf ear. In another year, he said, he would carry the mail up the coast, but his puppies were still too young to be pushed hard through a blizzard. Another year and he would show the posts down the coast what a real dog-team could do.

Glancing at McCain, Gillies shook his head resignedly, for he knew well why Jean Marcel wished to avoid Whale River.

On the morning of his departure, as Jean stood with Michel on the beach by the canoe, surrounded by his four impatient dogs, Julie stooped and kissed the white marking between Fleur's ears, whispering a good-bye.

Turning her head in response, the dog's moist nose and rough tongue reached the girl's hand.

"Lucky Fleur!" Jean said to his friends.

"It's sure worth while being a dog, sometimes," drawled Angus McCain with a grimace. But Julie Breton ignored the remarks, wis.h.i.+ng Marcel G.o.dspeed.

Through the day as they travelled Marcel looked on the high sh.o.r.es of the Salmon with unseeing eyes, for in them was the vision of a girl bending over a great dog.