"These were all we found—nothing else," replied Lelac, his small eyes wavering before the gaze of the factor.
"You swear that you found nothing but these things," repeated Gillies, pointing to the articles on the floor in front of the table.
"Nothing."
The set face of Jean Marcel, which had remained expressionless during the Lelacs' statement, relaxed in a wide smile which did not escape many a shrewd pair of Cree eyes.
"Jean Marcel will now relate what passed on the Ghost through the moons of the long snows."
With the announcement, there was much stirring and shuffling of moccasins accompanied by suppressed exclamations and muttering, among the expectant Crees. But when Marcel rose, squared his wide shoulders, and with head high ran his eyes over the assembled Crees, friendly and hostile, to rest at length on the Lelacs, his lips curled with an expression of contempt, while the Indians and breeds relapsed into silence.
Slowly, and in detail, Jean told in the Cree language how his partners had gone up-river when he started south on the trail of the dog-thieves; how he recaptured Fleur, and later reached the Ghost at the "freeze-up." The tale of his nine-hundred-mile journey to the south coast drew many an "Ah-hah!" of mingled surprise and admiration from those who remembered Marcel's voyage of the previous spring through the spirit-haunted valleys of the Salmon headwaters. With his familiarity with the Cree mental make-up and his French instinct for dramatic values, he held them breathless by the narration of this Odyssey of the north.
Then Marcel described the long weeks when the three men fought starvation, with the deer and rabbits gone; how he travelled far into the land of the Windigo in search of beaver; and finally, he came to the break with his partners. The hard feeling which developed at the camp on the Ghost, Jean made no attempt to gloss over, but boldly told how the others had not played fair with the food, and he had left them to fight out the winter alone. Of the death of Piquet he spoke as one speaks of the extermination of vermin. An assassin in the night, Piquet had come to the tent of a sleeping man and the dog alone had saved his life.
They called his dog the "man-killer." Would they have asked less of their own huskies? he demanded. But if any of them doubted, and he understood that the Lelacs were among these, that his dog could have killed Piquet, let them come to the tent in the Mission stockade by night—and learn for themselves.
"Nama, no!" some Indian audibly protested, and for a space the room was a riot of laughter, for the Crees had seen Fleur, the "man-killer."