FOR LOVE OF A GIRL
Two days before Christmas the team of Jean Marcel, its harness brave with colored worsted, meeting the snarls of hostile Cree curs with the like threat of white fangs, jingled gaily past sleep-house and tepees, and drew up before the log trade-house at Whale River. Returning the greeting of the Crees who hailed him, he threw open the slab-door of the building.
"Bon jour, Jean, eet ees well dees Chreesmas you come." The grave face of Jules Duroc checked the jest on Marcel's lips as he shook his friend's hand.
"You are sad, mon ami; what has happened to the merry Jules?" Jean asked.
"Ah, Jean Marcel! Dere ees bad news for you at Whale River."
Across Marcel's brain flashed the memory of his dreams. Julie! Something had happened to Julie Breton. His speeding heart shook him as an engine a boat. A vise on his throat smothered the questions he strove to ask. His lips twitched, but from them came no words, as his questioning eyes held those of Jules.
"Yes, eet ees as you t'ink, Jean Marcel. She ees ver' seek."
Marcel's hands closed on Jules' arms as he demanded hoarsely:
"Mon Dieu! W'at ees eet, Jules? Tell me, w'at ees eet?"
"She has de bad arm. Cut de han' wid a knife."
Blood-poisoning, because of his medical ignorance, held less terror for Marcel than some strange fever, insidious and mysterious. He had feared that Julie Breton had a dread disease against which the crude skill of the north is helpless. So, as he hastened to the Mission where he found Mrs. Gillies installed as nurse, his hopes rose, for a wound in the hand could not be fatal.
From the anxious-eyed Père Breton who met him at the door, Jean learned the story.
Ten days before, Julie had cut her hand with a knife while preparing frozen fish for cooking. For days she had ignored the wound, when the hand, suddenly reddening, began to swell, causing much pain. Gillies and her brother had opened the inflamed wound, cleansing it with bichloride, but in spite of their efforts, the swelling had increased, advancing to the elbow.
She was now running a high fever, suffering great pain and frequently delirious. They realized that the proper treatment was an opening of the lymphatic glands of forearm and elbow to reach the poison slowly working upward, but did not dare attempt it. The priest told Marcel that in such cases if the poison was not absorbed into the circulation or reached by operation, it would extend to the arm-pit, then to the neck, with fatal termination.
Jean Marcel listened with head in hands to the despairing brother. Then he asked:
"Is there at Fort George or East Main, no one who could help her?"
"At Fort George, Monsieur Hunter who has been lately ordered there to the Protestant church, is a medical missionary. We learned this to-day when the Christmas mail arrived. But they were five days coming from Fort George with their poor dogs. It will take you eight days to make the round trip and even in a week it may be too late—too late——" He finished with a groan.
"Father, I will go and bring this missionary. I shall return before a week."
"God speed you, my son! The mail team is worn out and we were sending a team of the Crees, but they have no dogs like yours."
Mrs. Gillies led Marcel into Julie Breton's room and left them. On her white bed, with wayward masses of dusky hair tumbled on her pillow, lay Julie Breton, moaning low in the delirium of high fever. On a pillow at her side lay her bandaged left arm. As Marcel looked long at the flushed face with its parted lips murmuring incoherently, the muscles of his jaw flexed through the frost-blackened skin as he clenched his teeth at his helplessness to aid her—this stricken girl for whom he would have given his life.
Then he knelt, and lifting the limp hand on the coverlet, pressed it long to his lips, rose, and went out.
When Mrs. Gillies returned she found the right hand of Julie Breton wet—and understood.
First feeding and loosing his dogs in the stockade Marcel hurried to the trade-house. There he obtained from Jules five days' rations of whitefish for the dogs, and some pemmican, hard bread and tea.
"You t'ink you can mak' For' George een t'ree day?" Jules shook his head doubtfully. "Eet nevaire been made een t'ree day, Jean."
"No one evair before on de East Coast travel as I travel, Jules," was the low reply.
Gillies, Père Breton and McCain, talking earnestly, entered the room to overhear Marcel's words.
"Welcome back, Jean; you are going to Fort George instead of Baptiste?" the factor asked, shaking Marcel's hand.
"Yes, M'sieu, my team ees stronger team dan Baptiste's."
"When do you start?"
"Een leetle tam; I jus' feed my dogs."
"Are they in good shape? They must be tired from the river trail."
"Dey will fly, M'sieu."
"Thank heaven for that, lad. We've got just one good dog left in the mail team—the one you gave me. The rest are scrubs and they came in to-day dead beat. Two of our Ungavas died in November."
"M'sieu," said Marcel quietly, "my dogs will make For' George een t'ree days."
"It's never been done, Jean, but I hope you will."
When Marcel brought his refreshed dogs to the trade-house an hour later for his rations, a silent group of men awaited him. As Fleur trotted up, ears pricked, mystified at being routed out and harnessed in the dark, after she had eaten and curled up for the night, they were eagerly inspected by the factor.
"Why, the pups have grown inches since you left here in August, Jean. They're almost as big as Fleur, now," said Gillies, throwing the light from his lantern on the team.
"Tiens! Dat two rear dog look lak' timber wolves," cried Jules, as Colin and Angus turned their red-lidded, amber eyes lazily toward him, opening cavernous mouths in wide yawns, for they were still sleepy. Fleur, alive to the subdued tones of Jean Marcel and sensing something unusual, muzzled her master's hand for answer.
"What a team! What a team!" exclaimed McCain. "Never have the Huskies brought four such dogs here. They ought to walk away with a thousand pounds. Are they fast, Jean?"
"Dey can take a thousand all day, M'sieu. W'en you see me again, you will know how fast dey are. A'voir!" Marcel gripped the hands of the others, then turned to Père Breton, the muscles of his dark face working with suffering.
"Father," he said, "if she should wake and can understand, tell her—tell her to wait—a little longer till Jean and Fleur return. If—if she—cannot wait for us—tell her that Fleur and Jean Marcel will follow her—out to the sunset."
Then he turned, cracked his whip, hoarsely shouted: "Marche, Fleur!" and disappeared with his dogs into the night.