"The long snows have come and gone. Famine and suffering have again visited the hunters of Whale River. With the return of the rabbit plague, and the lack of deer, many of those who were here last year at the spring trade have gone to join their fathers. The Company is sad that its hunters and their families have suffered. Last autumn, three hunters went from this post to winter on the Ghost River. This spring but one returned. He is here now, for the reason that he travelled far into the great barrens to streams which join the Big Water many, many sleeps to the northeast, where at last he found the returning deer.
"This spring, when the Ghost was free of ice, Gaspard Lelac and his sons, wishing to visit their kinsman, Joe Piquet, travelled to the camp of the three hunters. What they found there they will now tell as they told it to me when they came to Whale River. After you have learned their story, Jean Marcel, the man who returned, will relate what happened on the Ghost under the moons of the long snows.
"The Company has sent to visit Whale River its chief of the East Coast, Inspector Wallace. He will hear the stories of these men and decide which of them speaks with a double tongue. It is for you, also, when they have spoken, to say whether Gaspard Lelac and his sons bring the truth to Whale River, or Jean Marcel. You know these men. Hear their talk and judge in your hearts between them. Gaspard Lelac has put the blood of Antoine Beaulieu and Joe Piquet on the head of Jean Marcel. The fathers at Ottawa and the Chiefs of the Company at Winnipeg will not suffer one of their children to go unpunished who takes the life of another.
"Listen to the speech of these men. Look with your eyes into their faces and upon what will be shown here, and judge who speaks with a double tongue and who from an honest heart. Gaspard Lelac will now tell what he saw and did."
As Gillies finished, a murmur of approval filled the room, followed by a tense silence.
Lelac, a grizzled French half-breed with small, closely-set eyes, which shifted here and there as he spoke, then rose and told in the Cree tongue the story he had retailed daily for the previous month.
Wishing to visit his nephew Piquet, he said, and learn how he had weathered the hard winter, in May Lelac and his sons had poled up the Ghost to the camp. There they found an empty cache and part of the outfits of Beaulieu and Piquet, the latter of which they at once recognized. Alarmed, they searched the vicinity of the camp, and by chance, discovered the body of Beaulieu buried under stones on the shore. There was a knife wound in his chest. They continued the search in hope of finding Piquet, as his blankets and outfit, evidently unused for months and eaten by mice, were strong proof of his death, also; but failed to find the body. Of the fur-packs and rifles of the two men there was no trace, but a knife, identified later as belonging to Antoine, they brought back. There were no signs of the third man's outfit about the camp. If the third man was alive, what were they to believe? Antoine was dead, and Piquet, also, for his blankets were there. Someone had killed Antoine and Piquet. There was but one other, Marcel. So they travelled to Whale River with the news.
The sons of Lelac glibly corroborated the story of their father. When they had finished, the trade-room buzzed with whispered comment.
At a nod from Wallace, Gillies questioned the older Lelac in Cree for the benefit of the Indians.
"You say that these blankets here, this knife and cooking kit, and the clothes and bags, were all that you found at the camp—that there were no fur and rifles on the cache?"