Three days later, he had run the strong-water of the Ghost to Conjuror's Falls, where he exchanged Beaulieu's canoe for his own, cached the previous fall, and continued on to the Whale until the moon set, when he camped.
Then next morning, long before the rising sun, reaching the smoking surface in his path, rolled the river mists back to fade on the ridges, Marcel, with Fleur in the bow, was well started on his three-hundred-mile journey. Travel as he might, he could not hope to overtake the canoe bearing the tale of the tragedy to Whale River; but each day when once the news had reached the post, the story, passed from mouth to mouth among the Crees, would gather size and distortion with Marcel not present to refute it. There was great need for speed, so he drove his canoe to the limit of his strength, running all rapids which skill and daring could outwit.
Different, far, from the home-coming he had pictured through the last weeks, would be his return to Whale River. True, there would have been no long June days with Julie Breton, as in previous summers, no walks up the river shore when the low sun turned the Bay to burnished copper, and later, the twilight held deep into the night. If she were not already married her days would be too full to spare much time to her old friend Jean Marcel. But there would have been rest and ease, after the months of toil and famine—long talks with Jules and Angus, with worry behind him in the hills. Instead he was returning to his friends branded as a criminal by the evidence of the cache on the Ghost.
At times, when the magic of the young spring, in the air, the forest, the hills, for a space swept clean his troubled brain of dark memory, he dreamed that the water-thrushes in the river willows called to him: "Sweet, sweet, sweet, Julie Breton!" That yellow warblers and friendly chickadees, from the spruces of the shore, hailed him as one of the elect, for was he not also a lover? That the kingfishers which scurried ahead of his boat gossiped to him of hidden nests. Deeply, as he paddled, he inhaled the scent of the flowering forest world, the fragrance of the northern spring, while his birch-bark rode the choked current. And then, the stark realization that he had lost her, and the shadow of his new trouble, would bring him rough awakening.
Meeting no canoes of Cree hunters bound for the trade, for it was yet early, in nine days Marcel turned into the post. He smiled bitterly as he saw in the clearing a handful of tepees. Around the evening fires they had doubtless already convicted Jean Marcel, alive or dead. Familiar with the half-breed weakness for exaggeration, he wondered in what form the story of the cache on the Ghost had been retailed at the trade-house. Well, he should soon know.
The howling of the post dogs announced his arrival, stirring Fleur after her long absence from the sight of her kind to a strenuous reply. Leaving his canoe on the beach Marcel went at once to the Mission, where the door was opened by the priest.
"Jean Marcel!" The bearded face of the Oblat lighted with pleasure as he opened his arms to the wanderer. "You are back, well and strong? The terrible famine did not reach you?" he asked in French.
Jean's deep-set eyes searched the priest's face for evidence of a change toward him but found the same frank, kindly look he had always known.
"Yes, Father, I beat the famine but I have bad news. Antoine is dead. He was——"
"Yes, I know," Père Breton hastily broke in. "They brought the word. It is terrible! And Piquet, is he dead also?"