Marcel followed the trails of wolf and dog until he lost them on the wind-packed snow of the barren. There was nothing to do but wait. He knew his dog had not forgotten him—would come home; but when? It was high time for his return to the camp in the Salmon country, to his precious cache of meat, which would attract lynxes and wolverines for miles around. The bears would soon leave their "washes" and the uprights of his cache were not proof against bear. But he would not go without Fleur, and she was away, somewhere in the hills.
Three days he waited, continuing to hunt that he might take a full sled-load back to his cache. But the weather was softening and any day now might mean the start of the big "break-up." It was deep in the third night that a great gray shape burst out of the forest and pounced upon the muffled figure under the shed-tent by the fire. As the dog pawed at the blanketed shape, Marcel, drugged with sleep and bewildered by the attack, was groping for his knife, when a familiar whine and the licks of a warm tongue proclaimed the return of Fleur, and the man threw his arms around his dog.
"Fleur come back to Jean?" Breaking from him, in sheer delight, the dog repeatedly circled the fire, then rearing on her hind legs put her fore-paws on his chest.
"Fleur bad dog to run away wid de wolf!" Marcel seized her by the jowls and shook the massive head, peering into the slant eyes in the dim starlight. And Fleur, as though ashamed of her desertion of the master, pushed her nose under his arm, the rumbling in her throat voicing her joy to be with him again. Then Marcel gave her meat from the cache which she bolted greedily.
It had not entered his mind once he had found her tracks that Fleur would not return to him, but during her long absence the condition of the snow had been a source of worry. Each day's delay meant the chance of the bottom suddenly falling out of the trail before he could freight his load of meat and traps back to his old camp far to the west. Once the big thaw was on, all sledding would be over. So, hurriedly eating his breakfast, he started under the stars, for at noon he would be held up by the softening trail. Toward mid-afternoon, when it turned colder, he would again travel.
Back at his old camp, Marcel found that the fish-hook necklace with which he had circled each of the peeled spruce uprights of his cache had baffled the wolverines and lynxes lured for miles by the odor of meat. Resetting short trap-lines, he waited for the "break-up" with tranquil mind, for his cache groaned with meat.