CHAPTER XXXIX
THE HATE OF THE LONG SNOWS
In the unwritten law of the north no one in peril shall ask for succor in vain. So universal is this creed, so general its acceptance and observance throughout the vast land of silence, that when word is brought in to settlement, fur-post, or lonely cabin, that help is needed, it is a matter of course that a relief party takes the trail, however long and hazardous. And so it was with John Hunter, clergyman, physician, and man. New to the north, he had come from England at the call for volunteers to shepherd the souls and bodies of the people of the solitudes, and without hesitation, he agreed to undertake a journey which the older heads at Fort George knew might well culminate in the discovery later, by a searching party, of two stiffened bodies buried beside a starved dog-team, somewhere in the drifts behind the Cape of the Four Winds.
Marcel and the dogs were in sore need of a few hours' rest for the grilling duel with snow and wind, before them, so, when he had eaten, Jean turned into a bed in the Mission.
At midnight Jean hitched his dogs and waked Hunter. Leaving Fort George asleep in the smother of snow, down to the river trail, into the white drive of the norther plunged the dog-team.
Giving the trail-wise Fleur her head in the black night, Jean, with Hunter, followed the sled carrying their food and robes. Turning from the swept river ice into the Bay, dogs and men met the full beat of the blasts with heads lowered to ease the hammering of the pin-pointed scourge whipping their faces. With the neighboring shore smothered in murk, Marcel, trusting to Fleur's instinct to keep the trail over the blurred white floor which only increased the blackness above, followed the sled he could barely see. Speed against the wind was impossible, and at all hazards he must keep the trail, for if they swung to the west on the sea-ice they were doomed to wander until they froze. He would push on and camp, until daylight, in the lee of the Isle of Graves. With the light they would begin to travel. Then on the open ice, where there was little drift, he would give Fleur and her pups the chance to prove their mettle, for there would be little rest. And beyond, at the rendezvous of the winds, they would have ten miles inland through the drifts. The unproven sons of Fleur would indeed need the stamina of wolves to take them through the days to come.
At last the trail, which the lead-dog had held solely by keeping her nose to the ice, ran in under the bold shore of Wastikun. There, after feeding the dogs, they burrowed into the snow in the lee of the cliffs wrapped in their fur robes. With the wind, the temperature had risen and men and dogs slept hard until dawn. Then, hot tea, bread and pemmican spurred the fighting heart of Marcel with hope. The wind had eased, but powdery snow still drove down blanketing the near shore.
Daylight found them on their way. Due to the wind there was as yet little drift on the trail over the Bay ice and the freshened dogs, with lowered heads, swung up the coast at a trot. All day with but short respite, men and dogs battled on against the norther. The mouth of the Little Salmon was the goal Marcel had set for himself—the river valley from which they would cut overland behind the gray cape, to the north coast. Forty miles away it lay—forty cruel miles of the torturing beat of shot-like snow on the faces of men and dogs; forty miles of endless pull and drag for the iron thews of Fleur and the whelps of the wolf. This was the mark which the now ruthless Frenchman, with but one thought, one vision, set for the shaggy beasts he loved.