THE WORK OF THE WHITE WOLVES
The first day, by hard hunting they shot three caribou, but to the surprise and chagrin of Antoine and Joe, on the second day, in a country where they had never failed to get meat earlier in the winter, the hunters got but one. After that not a caribou was seen on the wide barrens, while many trails were crossed, all heading south, and following the signs of the fleeing caribou were the tracks of wolves, not singly or in couples, but in packs.
When the hunters had satisfied themselves that the caribou had left the country, they relayed their meat into camp with the help of Fleur and lines attached to the sled to aid her.
That night the trappers took council. The caribou meat, flour and remaining fish, counting Jean's cache at Conjuror's Falls, would take them into February. After that, it would be rabbits through March and April until the fish began to move. In the meantime a few lake trout and pike could be caught with lines through holes in the ice. Also, setting the net under three feet of ice could be accomplished with infinite labor, but the results in midwinter were always a matter of doubt.
"You had all September to net fish, but what did you do? You grew fat on deer meat," flung out Jean bitterly, thinking of his hungry puppy who required nourishing food in these months of rapid growth.
"How much feesh you got in dat cache?" demanded Piquet, ignoring the remark.
"About one hundred fifty pound," replied Marcel.
"Not on Conjur' Fall, I mean at de lac."
The fish Jean had netted and cached at the lake, on arriving in October, were designed for his dog and already had been partly used.
"Only little left at de lac," he replied.
"Dat feesh belong to us all; de dog can leeve on rabbit."
Piquet's remark brought the blood to Jean's face.
"De dog gets her share of feesh, do you hear dat, Joe?" rasped Marcel, his eyes blazing. "You and Antoine got no right to dat feesh; you refuse to help me and you laugh when I net dat feesh. De dog gets her share, Joe Piquet!" Marcel rose, facing the others with a glitter in his eyes that had its effect on Piquet.
"We have bad tam, dees spreeng, for sure," moaned Antoine. "I weesh we net more feesh."
"Well, I tell you what to do," said Jean. "Eef de feesh do not bite tru de ice or come to de net, we travel over to de Salmon, plentee beaver dere."
At the suggestion of moving into the unknown country to the north, with its dread valleys peopled with spirits, the superstitious half-breeds shook their heads. Rather starve on the Whale, they said, than in the haunted valleys where the voices of the Windigo filled the nights with fear.
With a disgusted shrug of his wide shoulders, Marcel dismissed the subject. "All right, starve on de Ghost, de Windigo get you on de Salmon."
With the disappearance of the caribou the partners began setting rabbit snares to save their meat and flour. Jean brought up the last of his fish from Conjuror's Falls but refused to touch his cache at the lake. With strict economy and a liberal diet of rabbit, they decided that their food could carry them into March. Jean wished to keep the flour untouched for emergency, but the half-breeds, characteristically optimistic, counted on a return of the caribou, and they always had rabbit to fall back upon.
During the last week in January while following his trap-lines, Jean made a discovery the gravity of which drove him in haste back to the camp on the Ghost.
"How many long snows since de plague, Joe?" he asked.
His comrades turned startled eyes on the speaker. Piquet slowly counted on his fingers the winters since the last plague all but exterminated the snow-shoe rabbits, then leaping to his feet, cried: "By Gar! eet ees not dees year. No, no! de ole man at de trade said de nex' long snow after dees will be de plague."
"Well, de old men were wrong," Marcel calmly insisted, as his companions paled at the meaning of his words. "Eet ees dees year w'en you net leetle feesh, dat de rabbits die."
"No, eet ees a meestake!" they protested as the lean features of the Frenchman hardened in a bitter smile.
"On de last trip to my traps," went on the imperturbable Marcel, "I find four rabbit dead from de plague an' since de last snow I cross few fresh tracks."
"I fin' none een two days myself," echoed Antoine.
The stark truth of Marcel's contention drove itself home. At last, convinced, they gazed with blanched faces into each others' eyes from which looked fear—fear of the dread weeks of the March moon and the slow death which starvation might bring. The grim spectre which ever hovers over the winter camps in the white silences now menaced the shack on the Ghost.
Shortly, fresh rabbit tracks became rare. After years of plenty, the days of lean hunting for lynx and fox had returned. The plague, which periodically sweeps the north, would bring starvation, as well, to many a tepee of the improvident children of the snows.