"Bien! M'sieu Gillies, when do we start?"
"To-day, after dinner!"
Returning to the Mission elated, Marcel ate his dinner, made up his pack while they wished him "Bon-voyage!" then went out to the stockade.
At the gate he was met simultaneously by the impact of a shaggy body and the swift licks of an eager tongue. Then Fleur circled him at full speed, yelping her delight, while she worked off the excitement of seeing her playmate again, until, at length, she trotted up and nosed his hand, keen for the daily rubbing of her ears which drew from her deep throat grateful mutterings of content.
"I leave my petite chienne for a few days," he whispered into a hairy ear. "She will be a good dog and obey Ma'm'selle Julie, who will feed her?"
The puppy broke away and ran to the gate, turning to him with pricked ears as she whined for the daily stroll into the scrub after snow-shoe rabbits.
"Non, ma petite! We walk not to-day!" He stroked the slate-gray back which trembled with her desire for a run with the master, then circling her shaggy neck with his arms, his face against hers, while she fretted as though she knew Jean was leaving her, said: "A'voir, Fleur!" and closed the gate.
She stood grieving, her black nose thrust between the slab pickets, the slant eyes following Marcel's back until he disappeared. Then she raised her head and, in the manner of her kind, voiced her disappointment in a long howl. And the wail of his puppy struck with strange insistence upon the ears of Jean Marcel—like a premonition of misfortune which the future held for him and which he often recalled in the weeks to come.
As the canoe of the Company journeyed through the Strait of the Spirit, flocks of gray geese, which were now leading their broods out to the coast islands from the muskegs of the interior, rose ahead, to sail away in their geometric formations, while clouds of pin-tail and black duck patrolled the low beaches.
Jean left his cargo for the Huskies in a stone cache and running into a south-wester, while homeward bound, did not reach Whale River for a fortnight. As he approached the post, he made out at the log landing the Company steamer Inenew, loaded with trade goods from the depot at Charlton Island. Through the clearing, now almost bare of tepees, for the trade was over, he walked to the Mission. The door was opened by Julie Breton.