THE BLIND CLUTCH OF CIRCUMSTANCE
Three days later, he had run the strong-water of the Ghost to Conjuror's Falls, where he exchanged Beaulieu's canoe for his own, cached the previous fall, and continued on to the Whale until the moon set, when he camped.
Then next morning, long before the rising sun, reaching the smoking surface in his path, rolled the river mists back to fade on the ridges, Marcel, with Fleur in the bow, was well started on his three-hundred-mile journey. Travel as he might, he could not hope to overtake the canoe bearing the tale of the tragedy to Whale River; but each day when once the news had reached the post, the story, passed from mouth to mouth among the Crees, would gather size and distortion with Marcel not present to refute it. There was great need for speed, so he drove his canoe to the limit of his strength, running all rapids which skill and daring could outwit.
Different, far, from the home-coming he had pictured through the last weeks, would be his return to Whale River. True, there would have been no long June days with Julie Breton, as in previous summers, no walks up the river shore when the low sun turned the Bay to burnished copper, and later, the twilight held deep into the night. If she were not already married her days would be too full to spare much time to her old friend Jean Marcel. But there would have been rest and ease, after the months of toil and famine—long talks with Jules and Angus, with worry behind him in the hills. Instead he was returning to his friends branded as a criminal by the evidence of the cache on the Ghost.
At times, when the magic of the young spring, in the air, the forest, the hills, for a space swept clean his troubled brain of dark memory, he dreamed that the water-thrushes in the river willows called to him: "Sweet, sweet, sweet, Julie Breton!" That yellow warblers and friendly chickadees, from the spruces of the shore, hailed him as one of the elect, for was he not also a lover? That the kingfishers which scurried ahead of his boat gossiped to him of hidden nests. Deeply, as he paddled, he inhaled the scent of the flowering forest world, the fragrance of the northern spring, while his birch-bark rode the choked current. And then, the stark realization that he had lost her, and the shadow of his new trouble, would bring him rough awakening.
Meeting no canoes of Cree hunters bound for the trade, for it was yet early, in nine days Marcel turned into the post. He smiled bitterly as he saw in the clearing a handful of tepees. Around the evening fires they had doubtless already convicted Jean Marcel, alive or dead. Familiar with the half-breed weakness for exaggeration, he wondered in what form the story of the cache on the Ghost had been retailed at the trade-house. Well, he should soon know.
The howling of the post dogs announced his arrival, stirring Fleur after her long absence from the sight of her kind to a strenuous reply. Leaving his canoe on the beach Marcel went at once to the Mission, where the door was opened by the priest.
"Jean Marcel!" The bearded face of the Oblat lighted with pleasure as he opened his arms to the wanderer. "You are back, well and strong? The terrible famine did not reach you?" he asked in French.
Jean's deep-set eyes searched the priest's face for evidence of a change toward him but found the same frank, kindly look he had always known.
"Yes, Father, I beat the famine but I have bad news. Antoine is dead. He was——"
"Yes, I know," Père Breton hastily broke in. "They brought the word. It is terrible! And Piquet, is he dead also?"
"Yes, Father," Marcel said quietly. "Joe Piquet was killed by Fleur, here, after he stabbed Antoine!"
"Juste Ciel! Killed by Fleur after he stabbed Antoine?" repeated the priest, staring at the husky.
"Yes, I wish to tell you all first, Father, before I go to the trade-house—and Julie?" Jean inquired, his voice vibrant with fear of what the answer might be.
"Put the dog in the stockade and I will call Julie."
Ah, then she was not married. Marcel breathed with relief.
"We have been very sad here, wondering whether you had starved—were alive," continued the priest. "The tale Piquet's uncle, Gaspard Lelac, and sons brought in day before yesterday made us think you also might have——"
"Did they say Antoine had been stabbed?" interrupted Marcel, for the priest had avoided mention of the cause of Beaulieu's death.
"They said they found his body." Père Henri still shunned the issue.
"Where?" demanded Marcel.
"Buried on the river shore!"
"They lie!" As Marcel had anticipated, the half-breeds had embellished the sufficiently damning evidence of the cache. He realized that he faced a battle with men who would not scruple to lie when the stark facts already looked badly enough.
"They never were truthful people, my son. We have hoped and prayed for your coming to clear up the mystery."
Jean put Fleur in the stockade and returned to the house. Julie Breton stood in the doorway.
"Welcome home, Jean!" she cried in French, giving him both hands. "Why—you are not thin!" She looked wonderingly at his face. "We thought—you also—had starved." Her eyes filled with tears as she gazed at the man already numbered with the dead.
Swept by conflicting emotions, Marcel swallowed hard. Were these sisterly tears of joy at his safe return or did she weep for the Jean Marcel she once knew, now dishonored?
"There, there! Ma petite!" consoled Père Henri, stroking the dark head. "We have Jean here again, safe; all will be well in time."
"Julie had you starved out in the 'bush,' Jean, when we heard their story," explained the priest.
But the puzzled youth wondered why Père Henri did not mention the charges that the half-breeds must have made on reaching Whale River.
Recovering her self-control Julie excused herself to prepare supper. Then before asking what the Lelacs had told the factor, Marcel related to the priest the grim details of the winter on the Ghost; of the deaths of Antoine and Piquet, of his fortunate meeting with the returning caribou, and of his discovery, on his return to the old camp, of the visit of the Lelacs' canoe.
"Father, it looks bad for me. They found Antoine stabbed and Piquet's fur and outfit. I brought his rifle back to the camp and cached it with his stuff and Antoine's to bring it all down river in the spring to their people."
At this the heavy brows of the priest lifted in surprise. Marcel continued:
"The cache was empty. It was a starvation camp. Antoine was dead, and Piquet also, for his outfit was there. Seeing these things, what could anyone think? That the third man, Jean Marcel, did this and then went into the barrens for caribou. There he starved out, or else found meat and would return, when he could clear himself if able. Father, it was my wish to tell you my story before I heard the tale the Lelacs brought to the post. Then you could judge between us."
The priest leaned forward in his chair and rested his hands on Marcel's shoulders. His eyes sought those of the younger man which met his gaze unwaveringly. "Jean Marcel," he said, "I have known you since your father brought you to Whale River as a child. You have never lied to me. True, the circumstances are unfortunate; but you have told me the truth. We did not believe that you had killed your comrades; you would have starved first; nor did Gillies or McCain or Jules believe in the truth of the charge of the Lelacs. They are waiting to hear your story. Also, since hearing your side, I see why the Lelacs are anxious to have it believed at the trade-house that you were responsible for the deaths of these men. They are grinding an axe of their own. It is not alone because they are kin of Piquet that they wish to discredit and injure you."
"How do you mean, Father?" Marcel asked, curious as to the significance of the priest's last statement.
"I will tell you later, my son. You should report at the trade-house now. They are waiting for you."
Cheered with the knowledge that his old friends were still staunch, that the factor had waited for his return before expressing even an opinion, Marcel hurried to the trade-house.
Meeting no one as he passed the scattered tepees, he flung open the slab-door of the log-building and with head high, entered.
"Jean Marcel! By Gar, we hear you arrive!" roared the big Jules, rushing upon the youth with open arms. "You not starve out, eh?"
Then Gillies and McCain, wringing his hand, added their welcome. Surely, he thought, with choked emotion, these men had not turned against him because of the tales of Lelac.
"Jean, you had a hard winter with the rabbits gone," suggested Gillies. "You must have found the caribou this spring?"
"Yes, I find de caribou, M'sieu, but I travel far for dem; eet was hard time een Mars."
"And the dog, you didn't have to eat your dog, Jean?" asked McCain.
Marcel's face hardened.
"De dog and Jean, dey feast and dey starve togeder. I am no Cree dog-eater. Dat dog she save my life, one, two tam, dees winter, M'sieu."
Never had the thought of sacrificing Fleur as a last resort entered the mind of Marcel in the lean days on the barrens.
"Well, my lad," said Gillies heartily, "we are sure glad to have you back alive. We hear there was much starvation on the East Coast this year, with the rabbit plague and the scarcity of deer."
They also, Marcel saw, were waiting to hear his story before alluding to the charges of the half-breed kinsmen of Piquet.
"M'sieu Gillies," Jean began. "I weesh to tell you what happen on de Ghost. De Lelacs bring a tale to Whale Riviere dat ees not true."
"We have paid no attention to them, Jean, trusting you would show up and could explain it all then. I know you and I know the Lelacs. I was sorry to hear about Antoine and Piquet but I don't think you had any part in it, lad. Be sure of that!"
"T'anks, M'sieu." Then slowly and in great detail Marcel related to the three men, sitting with set faces, the gruesome history of the past winter. When he came to the night that Fleur had destroyed the crazed Piquet, the Hudson's Bay men turned to each other with exclamations of wonder and admiration.
"That's a dog for you! She got his wind just in time!" muttered Gillies.
"Tiens! Dat Fleur she is lak de wolf," added Jules.
"You ask eef I eat her, M'sieu," Marcel turned on McCain grimly. "Could you eat de dog dat save your life?"
"No, by God! I'd starve first!" thundered the Scotchman.
"I love dat dog," said Jean quietly, and went on with his tale.
Breathless, they heard how he had pushed deeper and deeper beyond the hunting grounds of the Crees into the nameless barrens until he reached streams flowing northeast into Ungava Bay, and at last met the returning caribou; how the great strength of Fleur beat the drag of the net, when he was slowly freezing in the lake; and then he came to his return to the Ghost.
In detail Marcel enumerated the articles belonging to Antoine and Piquet which he had placed on the stage of the cache beside Beaulieu's body when he left for the Salmon country and which had been taken by the Lelacs to Whale River.
"I lashed Antoine een hees shed-tent and put heem on de cache, for the wolverine and lynx would get heem een de snow." As Marcel talked McCain and Gillies exchanged significant looks.
"Um!" muttered the factor, when Jean had finished. "Something queer here!"
"What, M'sieu?" Marcel demanded.
"Why, Lelac says he found the body of Antoine buried under stones on the shore and that there was nothing on the cache except the empty grub bags."
"Dey say de fur and rifle was not dere?"
"Yes, nothing on the cache!"
"Den I must have de rifle and de fur; ees dat eet?"
"Yes, that's what they insinuate."
"Ah-hah!" Marcel scowled, thinking hard. "Dey say dey fin' noding, so do not turn over to you de rifle and fur-pack."
"Yes, they claim you must have hidden them as you hid the body."
"Den how do dey know Piquet ees dead too?" Marcel's dark features relaxed in a dry smile. It was not, then, solely the desire for vengeance on the murderer of their kin that had prompted the half-breeds to distort the facts.
"They say his extra clothes and his outfit were in the cabin, only his rifle and fur missing. Now, Jean," he continued, "I am perfectly satisfied with your story. I believe every word of it. I knew your father and I know you. The Marcels are not liars. But the Lelacs are going to make trouble over the evidence they found at your camp. Suspicion always points to the survivor in a starvation camp, and you know the circumstances are against you, my lad."
"M'sieu," Marcel protested. "Eef I keel Antoine, I would tak' heem into de bush and hide heem, I would not worry ovair de fox and wolverine."
"Of course you would have hidden the body somewhere. We appreciate that. But as they are trying to put this thing on you they ignore that side of it. What you admit they found,—Antoine's body with a stab wound, and Piquet's outfit, makes it look bad to people who don't know you as we do. They won't believe that the famine got Piquet in the head. They'll say that's a tale you made up to get yourself off."
Marcel went hot with anger. His impulse was to seek the Lelacs and have it out, then and there. But he possessed the cool judgment of a long line of ancestors whose lives had often depended on their heads, so he choked back his rage.
"Now I don't want it carried down the coast that you killed your partners, Jean," went on Gillies. "Young as you are, you'll never live it down. And besides, there's no knowing what the government might do. I'll have to make a report, you know. So we've got to do some tall thinking between us before the hunters get in."
While the factor talked, the swift brain of Marcel had struck upon a plan to trap and discredit the Lelacs, but he wished to think it over, alone, before proposing it at the trade-house, so held his tongue. When he was ready he would ask the factor to hold a hearing. Then he could put some questions to his accusers that would make them squirm. One question he did ask before packing his fur and outfit from the beach up to the Mission.
"Have de Lelac traded dere fur, M'sieu?"
"No, we haven't started the trade yet."
"W'en dey trade dere fur weel you hold it from de oder fur, separate?"
"Why, yes, I'll do that for you, but you can't hope to identify skins, Jean."
A corner of Marcel's mouth curled in a quizzical smile. "Wait, M'sieu Gillies; I tell you later," and with a "Bon-soir!" he went out.