With difficulty dragging his dog from the crumpled shape, Marcel looked, and from the bloodied face grimacing horribly in death above the mangled throat, stared the glazed eyes of Joe Piquet.
"By Gar! You travel far for de grub and de revanche, Joe Piquet," he exclaimed. Turning to the dog, snarling with hate of the prowling thing she had destroyed, Jean led her away.
"Fleur, ma petite!" he cried, "she took good care of Jean Marcel while he sleep. Piquet, he thought he keel us both in de tent. He nevaire see Fleur under de fir." The great dog trembling with the heat of battle, her mane stiff, yelped excitedly. "She love Jean Marcel, my Fleur; and what a strength she has!" Rearing, Fleur placed her massive fore-paws on Marcel's chest, whining up into his face; then seizing a hand in her jaws, proudly drew him back to the dead man in the snow. There, raising her head, as if in warning to all enemies of her master, she sent out over the white hills the challenging howl of the husky.
When Jean Marcel had buried the frozen body of Joe Piquet in a drift over the ridge, where the April thaws would betray him to the mercy of his kind, the forest creatures of tooth and beak and claw, he started back to the Ghost with Fleur, taking Piquet's rifle to be returned to his people with his fur and outfit. Confident that Antoine had had no part in the attempt to kill him and get his provisions, he wished Beaulieu to know Piquet's fate, as Antoine would now in all probability make for Whale River and could carry a message. Furthermore if anything had by chance happened to Beaulieu, Marcel wished to know it before starting north.
As Fleur drew him swiftly over the trail, ice-hard from much travelling, Jean decided that if Antoine wished to fight out the winter in the Salmon country, for the sake of their old friendship he would overlook the half-breed's weakness under Piquet's influence, and offer to take him.
Dawn was wavering in the gray east when Marcel reached the silent camp. He called loudly to wake the sleeping man inside; but there was no response.
Marcel's heavy eyebrows contracted in a puzzled look.
"Allo, Antoine!" Still no answer. Was he to find here more of the work of Joe Piquet? he wondered, as he swung back the slab-door of the shack and peered into the dim interior.
There in his bunk lay the half-breed.
"Wake up, Antoine!" Marcel cried, approaching the bunk; then the faint light from the open door fell on the gray face of Antoine Beaulieu, stiff in death.