For Antoine, the friend of his youth, ever easily led but at heart, honest enough, he held only feelings of disgust; but with the crooked-souled Piquet, henceforth it should be war to the knife. Knowing that there were more beaver in the white valleys of the Salmon country, Marcel faced with hope the March crust and the long weeks of the April thaws, when rotting ice would bar the waterways and soggy snow, the trails, to all travel. Somehow, he and Fleur would pull through and see Julie Breton and Whale River again. Somehow, they would live, but it meant a dogged will and day after day, many a white mile of drudgery for himself and the dog he loved. Crawl starved and beaten into Whale River—caught like a mink in a trap by the pinch of the pitiless snows—no Marcel ever did, and he would not be the first.
The February dusk hung in the spruce surrounding the half-way camp of Marcel beside a pond in the hills dividing the watershed of the Ghost from the Salmon. For three days Jean had been picking up his traps preparatory to making the break north to the beaver country. With a light load, for Fleur could not haul much over her weight on a freshly broken trail in the soft snow, the toboggan-sled stood before the tent ready for an early start under the stars. From the smoke-hole of the small tepee the sign of cooking rose straight into the biting air, for there was no wind. But the half-ration of trout and beaver which was simmering in the kettle would leave the clamoring stomach of the man unsatisfied. With the three beaver he had brought from the north and the fish and caribou from the Ghost, Marcel still had food for himself and his dog for a fortnight, but he was not an Indian and was husbanding his scanty store. Fleur had already bolted her fish, more supper than her master allowed himself, for Fleur was still growing fast and her need was greater.
Disliking the smoke from the fire which often filled the tepee, Fleur slept outside under the low branches of a fir, and when it snowed, waked warm beneath a white blanket. For, enured to the cold, the husky knows no winter shelter and needs none, sleeping curled, nose in bushy tail, in a hole dug in the snow, through the bitter nights without frost bite.
As the dusk slowly blanketed the forest, here and there stars pricked out of the dark canopy of sky to light gradually the white hills rolling away north to the dread valleys of the forbidden land of the Crees. Later, as the night deepened, the Milky Way drew its trail across the swarming stars. In the pinch of the strengthening cold, spruce and jack-pine snapped in the encircling forest, while the ice of lake and river, contracting, boomed intermittently, like the shot of distant artillery.
On the northern horizon, the camp-fires of the giants flickered and glowed, fitfully; then, at length, loosing their bonds, snake-like ribbons of light writhed and twisted from the sky-line to the high heavens, in grotesque traceries; and across the white wastes of the polar stage swept the eerie "Dance of the Spirits."
For a space Jean stood outside the tepee watching the never-ceasing wonder of the aurora; then sending Fleur to her bed, sought his blankets. But no sting of freezing air might keep the furred and feathered marauders of the night from their hunting; for faintly on the tense silence floated the "hoo-hoo!" of the snowy owl, patrolling the haunts of the wood-mice. Out of the murk of a cedar swamp rose the scream of a starving lynx. Presently, over star-lit ridges drifted the call of a mating timber wolf.
The Northern Lights had dimmed and faded. Sentinel stars alone guarded the white solitudes, when, from the gloom of the spruce out into the lighted snow moved a dark shape. Noiselessly the muffled racquettes of the skulker advanced. As the figure crept nearer the tent, it suddenly stopped, frozen into rigidity, head forward, as though listening. After a space, it stirred again. Something held in the hands glinted in the starlight, like steel. It was the action of a rifle, made bright by wear.
When the creeping shape reached the banking of the tepee, again it stopped, stiff as a spruce. The seconds lengthened into minutes. Then a hand reached out to the canvas. In the hand was a knife. Slowly the keen edge sawed at the frozen fabric. At last the tent was slit.
Leaning forward the hunter of sleeping men enlarged the opening and pressed his face to the rent. Long he gazed into the darkened tepee. Then withdrawing his hooded head, he shook it slowly as if in doubt. Finally, as though decided on his course, he thrust the barrel of his rifle through the opening and dropped his head as if to aim; when, from the rear a gray shape catapulted into his back, flattening him on the snow. As the weight of the dog struck the crouching assassin, his rifle exploded inside the tent, followed by a scream of terror.
Again and again the long fangs of the husky slashed at the throat of the writhing thing in the snow. Again and again the massive jaws snapped and tore, first the capote, then the exposed neck, to ribbons. Then with cocked rifle the dazed Marcel, waked by the gun fired in his ears, reached them.