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 ableto drive the rejuvenated Fleur to the barren and bring back the meat onthe sled. The days following were busy ones. At first his weaknessforced him to husband his strength while the stew and roasted red meatwere thickening his blood, but as the food began to tell, he was able tohunt farther and farther into the barrens where the main migration ofthe caribou was passing. When he was strong enough, he took Fleur with aload of meat back to his old winter camp, returning with traps. These heset at the carcasses he had shot, for foxes, lynxes and wolverines weredrawn from the four winds to his kill. So while he hunted meat to carryhim through April, and home, at the same time he added materially to hisfur-pack.
Toward the end of March, before the first thaws softened his back trailand made sled-travel heart-breaking for Fleur, Jean began relaying westthe meat he had shot. He had now, cached in the barrens, ample food tosupply Fleur and himself until the opening of the waterways when fishwould be a most welcome change. His sledding over, he returned to hiscamp in the barrens to get his traps and take one last hunt, for thelean weeks of the winter had made him over-cautious and he wished tomake the trip back with a loaded sled.
By the coming of April, Fleur, in whom an abundance of red caribou meathad swiftly worked a metamorphosis, had increased in bone and weight. AsJean watched her throw her heavy shoulders into her collar and trotlightly off over the hard trail with a two hundred pound load his heartleaped with love of the beautiful beast who worshipped him with everyred drop in her shaggy body. What a team she would give him some day! hethought. There would be nothing like them south of Hudson's Straits. Andthe Company would need them for the winter mail packet, with Jean Marcelto drive them.
Lately he had noticed a new trait in his dog. Several times, deep in thenight when he waked to renew the fire, he had found that Fleur was notsleeping near him but had wandered off into the "bush." As she needed nofood, 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, hehad, as usual, hunted all day, returning with a sled load of meat whichhe drew himself. As he approached the camp he crossed the trail of ahuge timber wolf and hurried to learn if his dog had been attacked, fortied as she was, she would fight with a cruel handicap. But Fleurgreeted him as usual with yelps of delight. In the vicinity of the campthere were no tracks to show that the wolf had approached the husky.However, Marcel decided that he would not leave her again bound in campunable to chew through the rawhide thongs in time to protect herselffrom sudden attacks of the wolves which roamed the country.
After supper man and dog sat by the fire, but Fleur was manifestlyrestless. Time and again she left his side to take long sniffs of theair. Not even the rubbing of her ears which usually brought grunts ofpleasure 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 hisblankets, when a long, wailing howl floated across the valley.
Fleur bounded to her feet, her quivering nostrils sucking in the keenair. Again the call of the timber wolf drifted out on the silent night.Fleur, alive with excitement, trotted into the "bush." In a moment shereturned to the fire, whimpering. Then sitting down, she pointed hernose at the stars and her deep throat swelled with the long-drawn howlof the husky. Shortly, when the timber wolf replied, the lips of Fleurdid not lift from her white fangs in a snarl nor did her thick mane riseas her ears pricked eagerly forward.
At dawn Jean waked with a sense of loneliness. Pushing together theembers of his fire, he put on fresh wood, and not seeing Fleur, calledto her but she did not appear. She had a habit of prowling around theneighboring "bush" at dawn, inspecting fresh tracks of mice, searchingfor ptarmigan or for the snow-shoe rabbits that were not there. But whenMarcel's breakfast was cooked Fleur was still absent. Thinking that afresh game trail had led her some distance, he ate, then started tobreak camp. Finally he put his index and middle fingers between histeeth and blew the piercing whistle which had never failed to bring herleaping home. Intently, he listened for her answer somewhere in thevalley of the stream or on the edge of the barren, but the yelp of hisdog did not come to his straining ears.
Curious as to the cause of her absence Jean smoked his pipe and waited.He was anxious to start back with his traps and meat; but where wasFleur? Becoming alarmed by the middle of the morning, he made a widecircle of the camp hoping to pick up her trail. Two days previous therehad been a flurry of snow sufficient to enable him to follow her trackson the stiff crust. In the vicinity of the camp were traces of Fleur'srecent footprints but finally, at a distance, Marcel ran into a freshtrail leading down into the brook-bottom. There he lost it, and afterhours of search returned to camp to wait for her return. But the daywore away and the husky did not appear. Night came and visions of hisdog lying somewhere stiff in the snow slashed and torn by wolves,tortured his thoughts. If only he could pick up her trail at daylight,he thought, for she might still live, crippled, unable to come to him,waiting for Jean Marcel who had never failed her.
As he sat brooding by his fire, he came to realize, now that he had losther, what a part of him the dog had become. His thoughts drifted backover their life together, months of gruelling toil and--delight. Tearstraced their way down the wind-burned cheeks of Marcel as he recalledher early puppy ways and antics, how she had loved to nibble with hersharp milk teeth at his moccasins and sit in the bow of the canoe, ontheir way down the coast, scolding at the seals and ducks; with what maddelight she had welcomed his visits to the stockade at Whale Rivercircling him at full speed, until breathless and panting, she leapedupon him, her hot tongue seeking his hands and face. Then on the longtrail home from the south coast marshes, how closely she would snuggleto his back as they lay on the beaches, as if fearing to lose him whileshe slept. And the winter on the Ghost, with its ghastly end--what arock his dog had been when his partners failed him! In the moment of hisperil, how savagely she had battled for Jean Marcel! Through the leanweeks of starvation when hope had died, to the dawn when she had wakedhim at the coming of the caribou, his thoughts led him. And now, whenspring and Whale River were near, it was all over. Their life togetherwith its promise of the future had been snapped short off. He shouldnever again look into the slant, brown eyes of Fleur. He had lost hisall; first Julie, and now, Fleur. There was nothing left.
At daybreak, without hope, he took up the search along the stream. Wherethe wind had driven, the crust now stiff with alternate freezing andthawing and swept clean of snow, would show little sign of the passingof the dog, but in the sheltered areas where the crust was softer andthe young snow lay, he hoped to cross the tracks of Fleur. At length,miles from the camp, he picked up the trail of the dog in some lightdrift. Following the tracks across the brook-bottom and into the scrubof the opposite slope, he suddenly stopped, wide-eyed with amazement atthe evidence written plainly in the light covering of the crust. Fleur'stracks had been joined by, and ran side by side with, the trail of awolf.
"By Gar!" gasped the surprised Frenchman. "She do not fight wid dewolf!"
As he travelled, he found no marks of battle in the snow, simply theparallel trails of the two, dog and wolf, now trotting, now lengtheningout into the long, wolf lope.
"Fleur leave Jean Marcel for de wolf!" the trapper rubbed his eyes asthough suspicious of a trick of vision. His Fleur, whom he loved as hislife and who adored Jean Marcel, to desert him this way in thenight--and for a timber wolf.
It was strange indeed. Yet he had heard of such things. It was this waythat the Esquimos kept up the marvellous strain to which Fleur belonged.He recalled the peculiar actions of the dog during the previousdays--the wolf tracks near the camp; her excitement of the night beforewhen the call had sounded o
ver the valley. This wolf had been doggingtheir trail for a week and Fleur had known it.
"Ah!" he murmured, nodding his head. "Eet ees de spreeng!"
Yes, the spring was slowly creeping north and the creatures of theforest had already answered its call. It was April, and Fleur, too, hadsuccumbed to an urge stronger for the moment than the love of themaster. April, the Crees' "Moon of the Breaking of the Snow-Shoes,"when, at last, the wind would begin to shift to the south and the nightslose their edge, only to shift back again, with frost. Then the snowwould melt hard at noon, softening the trails, and later on, rain andsleet would drive in from the great Bay turning the white floor of theforest to slush, flooding the ice of the rivers which later would breakup and move out, overrunning the shell of pond and lake which late inMay would honeycomb and disappear.
Marcel followed the trails of wolf and dog until he lost them on thewind-packed snow of the barren. There was nothing to do but wait. Heknew his dog had not forgotten him--would come home; but when? It washigh time for his return to the camp in the Salmon country, to hisprecious cache of meat, which would attract lynxes and wolverines formiles around. The bears would soon leave their "washes" and the uprightsof his cache were not proof against bear. But he would not go withoutFleur, and she was away, somewhere in the hills.
Three days he waited, continuing to hunt that he might take a fullsled-load back to his cache. But the weather was softening and any daynow might mean the start of the big "break-up." It was deep in thethird night that a great gray shape burst out of the forest and pouncedupon the muffled figure under the shed-tent by the fire. As the dogpawed at the blanketed shape, Marcel, drugged with sleep and bewilderedby the attack, was groping for his knife, when a familiar whine and thelicks of a warm tongue proclaimed the return of Fleur, and the man threwhis arms around his dog.
"Fleur come back to Jean?" Breaking from him, in sheer delight, the dogrepeatedly circled the fire, then rearing on her hind legs put herfore-paws on his chest.
"Fleur bad dog to run away wid de wolf!" Marcel seized her by the jowlsand shook the massive head, peering into the slant eyes in the dimstarlight. And Fleur, as though ashamed of her desertion of the master,pushed her nose under his arm, the rumbling in her throat voicing herjoy to be with him again. Then Marcel gave her meat from the cache whichshe bolted greedily.
It had not entered his mind once he had found her tracks that Fleurwould not return to him, but during her long absence the condition ofthe snow had been a source of worry. Each day's delay meant the chanceof the bottom suddenly falling out of the trail before he could freighthis load of meat and traps back to his old camp far to the west. Oncethe big thaw was on, all sledding would be over. So, hurriedly eatinghis breakfast, he started under the stars, for at noon he would be heldup 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 withwhich he had circled each of the peeled spruce uprights of his cache hadbaffled the wolverines and lynxes lured for miles by the odor of meat.Resetting short trap-lines, he waited for the "break-up" with tranquilmind, for his cache groaned with meat.
The Whelps of the Wolf Page 19