"Bo'-jo', Antoine!" he said, as he gripped his friend's hand. "I meet you at Whale Riviere."
The face of Beaulieu only too patently reflected his thoughts as he shook his head.
"Bo'-jo', Jean, I nevaire see you again."
"You are dead man, Jean," added Piquet; "we tell Julie Breton dat your bones lie up dere." And the half-breed pointed north to the dim, blue hills of dread.
So with fur-pack and outfit, and as much smoked caribou as he dared carry, Marcel poled his canoe up the Ghost, later to portage across the divide into the trailless land where, in the memory of living man, the feet of no hunter of the Hudson's Bay Company had strayed.
It was a reckless venture—this attempt to reach the Bay through an unknown country. The demons of the Cree conjurors he did not fear, for his father and his mother's father, who had journeyed, starved, and feasted in trailless lands, from Labrador to the great Barren Grounds, had never seen one or heard the wailing of the Windigo in the night. But what he did fear was the possibility of weeks of wandering in his search for the main stream, lost in a labyrinth of headwater lakes where game might be scarce and fish difficult to net. For his smoked meat would take him but a short way, when his rifle and net would have to see him through.
But the risk was worth taking. If he could reach the Esquimos on their spring journey south to the post, before they learned of the scarcity of dogs at Whale River, he could obtain huskies at a fair trade in fur. And a dog-team was his heart's desire.
Portaging over the divide to the large lake, now clear of ice, Marcel followed its winding outlet into the northwest. There were days when, baffled by a maze of water routes in a network of lakes, he despaired of finding the main stream. There were nights when he lay supperless by his fire thinking of Julie Breton, the black-eyed sister of the Oblat Missionary at Whale River—nights when the forebodings of his partners returned to mock him as a maniacal mewing broke the silence of the forest, or, across the valleys, drifted low wailing sobs, like the grieving of a Cree mother for her dead child.
But in the veins of Jean Marcel coursed the blood of old coureurs-de-bois. His parents, victims of the influenza which had swept the coast the year previous, had left him the heritage of a dauntless spirit. Lost and starving though he was, he smiled grimly as the roving wolverine and the lynx turned the night into what would have been a thing of horror to the superstitious breeds.
When, gaunt from toil and the lack of food, Marcel finally found the main stream and shot a bear, he knew he would reach the Esquimos. Two hundred miles of racing river he rapidly put behind him and one June day rounded the bend above a long white-water. The voyageur ran the rapids, rode the "boilers" at the foot of the last pitch and shot into deep water again. But as he swung inshore to rid the craft of the slop picked up in the churning "strong-water" behind him, Marcel's eyes widened in surprise. He was nearer the sea than he had guessed. His last rapids had been run. He had reached his goal, for on the shore stood the squat skin lodges of an Esquimo camp, and moving about on the beach, he saw the shaggy objects of his quest.