The Whelps of the Wolf

by George Marsh

What he had hoped to avoid had come. It would have been better to listen to Kovik's warning against delaying his departure and attempting to fish at the rapids after the salmon arrived. The use of the boy's spear, the day previous, had brought the feeling among the younger men to a head. They meant to drive him down river.

Removing the whitefish and small salmon, Jean lifted his net and stretching it to dry on the shore, recrossed the stream. On the beach awaiting his return were the Huskies. Clearly, they had decided that he was possessed of no supernatural powers and could now be bullied with impunity. As he did not wish to embroil his friend Kovik in his defense, when he had smoked his last catch he would leave. But the blood of the fighting Marcels was slowly coming to a boil. If these raw fish-eaters thought that they could frighten the grandson of the famous Étienne Lacasse, and the son of André Marcel, whose strength was a tradition on the East Coast, he could show them their mistake. Still, avoid trouble he must, for a fight would be suicide.

So ignoring the Huskies, who talked together in low tones, Marcel landed, cleaned some fish for the Koviks' kettle, and carried them up to the tepee where the family were still asleep. Returning, the hot blood rose to the bronzed face of the Frenchman at what he saw.

The three Esquimos were coolly feeding his fish to the dogs.

Reckless of the consequences, in the blind rage which choked him, Marcel reached the pilferers of his canoe before they realized that he was on them. Seizing one by his long hair, with a wrench he hurled the surprised Husky backward into the water and sent a second reeling to the stony beach with a fierce blow in the face. The third, retreating from the fury of the attack of the maddened white man, drew his skinning knife; but seizing his paddle, Marcel sent the knife spinning with a vicious slash which doubled the screaming Husky over a broken wrist. Turning, he saw his first victims making down the beach toward the tepees, while the uproar of the dogs was swiftly arousing the camp.

Then, as his blood cooled and his judgment returned, the youth, who had suffered and dared much that he might have dogs for the next long snows, realized the height of his folly. They had baited him into furnishing them with an excuse for attacking him. Now even the faithful Kovik would be helpless against them. He would never see Whale River and Julie Breton again. Already the Huskies were emerging from their tepees, to hear the tale of his late antagonists. There was no time to lose before they rushed him.

Bounding up the beach to Kovik's tepee for his rifle, he rapidly explained the situation to the Esquimo, while in his ears rang the shouts of the excited Huskies and the yelping of the dogs. Jean did not hope to escape alive from this bedlam, but of one thing he was sure, he would die like a Marcel, with a smoking gun in his hands.

Urging Jean to get his fur-pack and smoked fish to his canoe at once, Kovik hurried down the shore to the knot of wildly excited Esquimos.

With the aid of the grateful wife and son of Kovik, Marcel's canoe was swiftly loaded and his treasured puppy lashed in the bow. But the rush up the beach of an infuriated throng bent on his death, which Marcel stoically awaited beside a large boulder, was delayed. Not a hundred yards distant, the doughty Kovik, the center of an arguing mob, was fighting with all the wits he possessed for the man who had saved his son. For Marcel to attempt to escape by water would only have drawn the fire of the Huskies and nullified Kovik's efforts, and their kayaks, faster than any canoe, were below him. A break for the "bush," even if successful, in the end, meant starvation. So with extra cartridges between his teeth, and in his hands, Jean Marcel grimly fingered the trigger-guard of his rifle, as he waited at the boulder for the turn of the dice down the shore.

Minutes, each one an eternity to the man at bay, passed. But Kovik still held his men, and Marcel clearly noted a change in the manner of the Huskies. The shouting had ceased. His friend was winning.