CHAPTER XVIII
SPRING AND FLEUR
At intervals during the day Jean drank the strengthening broth, too "bush-wise" to sicken himself by gorging. By late afternoon he was able to drive the rejuvenated Fleur to the barren and bring back the meat on the sled. The days following were busy ones. At first his weakness forced him to husband his strength while the stew and roasted red meat were thickening his blood, but as the food began to tell, he was able to hunt farther and farther into the barrens where the main migration of the caribou was passing. When he was strong enough, he took Fleur with a load of meat back to his old winter camp, returning with traps. These he set at the carcasses he had shot, for foxes, lynxes and wolverines were drawn from the four winds to his kill. So while he hunted meat to carry him through April, and home, at the same time he added materially to his fur-pack.
Toward the end of March, before the first thaws softened his back trail and made sled-travel heart-breaking for Fleur, Jean began relaying west the meat he had shot. He had now, cached in the barrens, ample food to supply Fleur and himself until the opening of the waterways when fish would be a most welcome change. His sledding over, he returned to his camp in the barrens to get his traps and take one last hunt, for the lean weeks of the winter had made him over-cautious and he wished to make the trip back with a loaded sled.
By the coming of April, Fleur, in whom an abundance of red caribou meat had swiftly worked a metamorphosis, had increased in bone and weight. As Jean watched her throw her heavy shoulders into her collar and trot lightly off over the hard trail with a two hundred pound load his heart leaped with love of the beautiful beast who worshipped him with every red drop in her shaggy body. What a team she would give him some day! he thought. There would be nothing like them south of Hudson's Straits. And the Company would need them for the winter mail packet, with Jean Marcel to drive them.
Lately he had noticed a new trait in his dog. Several times, deep in the night when he waked to renew the fire, he had found that Fleur was not sleeping near him but had wandered off into the "bush." As she needed no food, he thought these night hunts of the husky peculiar. But at dawn, he always found Fleur back in camp sleeping beside him.
It was Marcel's last night in the barren-ground camp. Leaving Fleur, he had, as usual, hunted all day, returning with a sled load of meat which he drew himself. As he approached the camp he crossed the trail of a huge timber wolf and hurried to learn if his dog had been attacked, for tied as she was, she would fight with a cruel handicap. But Fleur greeted him as usual with yelps of delight. In the vicinity of the camp there were no tracks to show that the wolf had approached the husky. However, Marcel decided that he would not leave her again bound in camp unable to chew through the rawhide thongs in time to protect herself from sudden attacks of the wolves which roamed the country.
After supper man and dog sat by the fire, but Fleur was manifestly restless. Time and again she left his side to take long sniffs of the air. Not even the rubbing of her ears which usually brought grunts of pleasure had the magic to hold her long.
The early moon hung on the white brow of a distant ridge, and Jean, finishing his pipe, was about to renew his fire and roll into his blankets, when a long, wailing howl floated across the valley.
Fleur bounded to her feet, her quivering nostrils sucking in the keen air. Again the call of the timber wolf drifted out on the silent night. Fleur, alive with excitement, trotted into the "bush." In a moment she returned to the fire, whimpering. Then sitting down, she pointed her nose at the stars and her deep throat swelled with the long-drawn howl of the husky. Shortly, when the timber wolf replied, the lips of Fleur did not lift from her white fangs in a snarl nor did her thick mane rise as her ears pricked eagerly forward.