CHAPTER XXXIX
THE HATE OF THE LONG SNOWS
In the unwritten law of the north no one in peril shall ask for succorin vain. So universal is this creed, so general its acceptance andobservance throughout the vast land of silence, that when word isbrought in to settlement, fur-post, or lonely cabin, that help isneeded, it is a matter of course that a relief party takes the trail,however long and hazardous. And so it was with John Hunter, clergyman,physician, and man. New to the north, he had come from England at thecall for volunteers to shepherd the souls and bodies of the people ofthe solitudes, and without hesitation, he agreed to undertake a journeywhich the older heads at Fort George knew might well culminate in thediscovery later, by a searching party, of two stiffened bodies buriedbeside a starved dog-team, somewhere in the drifts behind the Cape ofthe Four Winds.
Marcel and the dogs were in sore need of a few hours' rest for thegrilling duel with snow and wind, before them, so, when he had eaten,Jean turned into a bed in the Mission.
At midnight Jean hitched his dogs and waked Hunter. Leaving Fort Georgeasleep in the smother of snow, down to the river trail, into the whitedrive of the norther plunged the dog-team.
Giving the trail-wise Fleur her head in the black night, Jean, withHunter, followed the sled carrying their food and robes. Turning fromthe swept river ice into the Bay, dogs and men met the full beat of theblasts with heads lowered to ease the hammering of the pin-pointedscourge whipping their faces. With the neighboring shore smothered inmurk, Marcel, trusting to Fleur's instinct to keep the trail over theblurred white floor which only increased the blackness above, followedthe sled he could barely see. Speed against the wind was impossible, andat all hazards he must keep the trail, for if they swung to the west onthe sea-ice they were doomed to wander until they froze. He would pushon and camp, until daylight, in the lee of the Isle of Graves. With thelight they would begin to travel. Then on the open ice, where there waslittle drift, he would give Fleur and her pups the chance to prove theirmettle, for there would be little rest. And beyond, at the rendezvous ofthe winds, they would have ten miles inland through the drifts. Theunproven sons of Fleur would indeed need the stamina of wolves to takethem through the days to come.
At last the trail, which the lead-dog had held solely by keeping hernose to the ice, ran in under the bold shore of Wastikun. There, afterfeeding the dogs, they burrowed into the snow in the lee of the cliffswrapped in their fur robes. With the wind, the temperature had risen andmen and dogs slept hard until dawn. Then, hot tea, bread and pemmicanspurred the fighting heart of Marcel with hope. The wind had eased, butpowdery snow still drove down blanketing the near shore.
Daylight found them on their way. Due to the wind there was as yetlittle drift on the trail over the Bay ice and the freshened dogs, withlowered heads, swung up the coast at a trot. All day with but shortrespite, men and dogs battled on against the norther. The mouth of theLittle Salmon was the goal Marcel had set for himself--the river valleyfrom which they would cut overland behind the gray cape, to the northcoast. Forty miles away it lay--forty cruel miles of the torturing beatof shot-like snow on the faces of men and dogs; forty miles of endlesspull and drag for the iron thews of Fleur and the whelps of the wolf.This was the mark which the now ruthless Frenchman, with but onethought, one vision, set for the shaggy beasts he loved.
Hunter, game though he was, at last was forced to ride on the sled, sofierce was their pace into the wind. Steadily the great beasts ate upthe miles. At noon, floundering through drifts like the billows of abroken sea, with Marcel ahead breaking trail, they crossed CaribouPoint, Hunter, refusing to burden the dogs, wallowing behind the sled.There they boiled tea, then pushed on to the mouth of the Roggan.
At Ominuk, night fell like a tent, and again a white wraith of alead-dog, blinded by the fury she faced, kept the trail by instinct,backed loyally by her brood of ice-sheathed wolves, foot-sore,trail-worn, following with low noises her tireless feet.
The coast swung sharply. They were in the lee of the Cape. But a fewmiles farther and a long rest in the sheltered river valley awaitedthem. Marcel stopped his dogs and went to Fleur, lying on the trail, herhot breath freezing as it left her panting mouth. Kneeling on the snowbeside her with his back to the drive, he examined each hairy paw forpad-cracks or balled snow between the toes, but the feet of the Ungavawere iron; then he took in his hands her great head with its batterednose, blood-caked from the snow barrage she had faced all day. Rubbingthe ice from her masked eyes, Jean placed his hooded face against hisdog's; she turned her nose and her rough tongue touched hisfrost-blackened cheek.
"Fleur," he said, "we are doing it for Julie--you and Jean Marcel. Wemus' mak' de Salmon to-night. Some day we weel hav' de beeg sleep--youand Jean."
Again he stroked her massive head with his red, unmittened hand, thenfor an instant resting his face against the scarred nose, sprang to hisfeet. With a glance at the paws and a word for each of the whiningpuppies whose white tails switched in answer, Jean cracked his whip andshouted, "Marche!"
Late that night a huge fire burned in the timber of the sheltered mouthof the Little Salmon. Two men and a dog-team ate ravenously, then sleptlike the dead, while over them roared the norther, rocking the spruceand jack-pine in the river bottom, heaping the drifts high on the WhaleRiver trail.
In three days of gruelling toil Marcel had got within ninety miles ofhis goal--within a day and a half of Whale River had the trail been icehard. But now it would be days longer--how many he dared not guess.
Had the weather held for him, four days from the night of his startingwould have seen him home; for on an iced trail, at his call, his greatdogs would have run like wolves at the rallying cry of the pack. As hedrew his stiffened legs from the rabbit-skins to freshen the fire atdawn, he bit his cracked lips until they bled, at the thought of whatthe blizzard had meant to Julie Breton, waiting, waiting for thedog-team creeping up the East Coast, hobbled and held back by head-windand drift.
The dogs had won a long rest and Marcel did not start breaking trailinland until after daylight. With the sunrise the wind had increased andthe heart-sick Marcel groaned at the strength-sapping floundering inbreast-high drifts which faced his devoted dogs, when he needed themfresh for the race up the sea-ice of the coast beyond. Before he slept,he had weighed the toil of ten miles of drift-barred short-cut acrossthe Cape, against doubling the headland on the ice, but he had decidedthat no men or dogs could face the maelstrom of wind and snow whichchurned around its bald buttresses; no strength could force its way--noendurance prevail, against it.
With Marcel in the lead as trail-breaker and the missionary, who tookthe punishment without murmur, like the man he was, following the sled,Fleur led her sons up to their Calvary in the hills.
As they left the valley and reached the open tundra above, they met thefull force of the wind. For an instant men and dogs stopped dead intheir tracks, then with heads down they hurled themselves into the whitefury which had buried the trail beyond all following.
On pushed the desperate Frenchman in the direction of the north coast,followed by Fleur with her whitened nose at the tails of his snow-shoes.At times, when the force of the snow-swirls sucked their very breath,men and dogs threw themselves panting on the snow, until, with windregained, they stumbled on. Often plunging to their collars in the newsnow, the huskies travelled solely by leaps, until, stalled nose-deep,tangled in traces and held by the drag of the overturned sled, Marceland the exhausted Hunter came to their rescue. Heart-breaking mile aftermile of the country over which Marcel had sped two days before, theypainfully put behind them.
At noon, the man who lived his creed crumpled in the snow. Wrapping himin robes, Marcel lashed him on the sled and went on, the vision of adying girl on a white cot at Whale River ever in his eyes.
Through a break in the snow, before the light waned, Marcel made out,dim in the north, the silhouette of Big Island. He was over the divideand well on his way to the coast. With the night, the wind eased
, thoughthe snow held, and although he was off the trail, the new snow on theexposed north slope of the Cape was either wind-packed or swept from thefrozen tundra, and again the exhausted dogs found good footing.
For some time the team had been working easily down hill, Marcel oftenforced to brake the toboggan with his feet. He knew he had worked to thewest of the trail, and was swinging in a circle to regain it. Worried bythe sting of the cold, which was growing increasingly bitter as the windfell off, he stopped to rub the muffled, frost-cracked face and hands ofhis spent passenger, cheering him with the promise of a roaring fire.When he started the team, Colin, stiffened by the rest, limped badly,and Jules, who had bucked the deep snow all day like a veteran of themail-teams, gamely following his herculean mother, hobbled along, headand tail down, with a wrenched shoulder. It was high time they found acamping place. With the falling wind they would freeze in the open. Sohe pushed on through the murk, seeking the beach where there was woodand a lee.
They were swiftly dropping down to the sea-ice but snow and darknessdrew around them an impenetrable curtain. Seizing the gee-pole, Marcelhad thrown his weight back on the sled to keep it off the dogs on adescent when suddenly Fleur, whose white back he could barely see movingin front, with a whine stopped dead in her tracks and flattened on thesnow. Her tired sons at once lay down behind her. The sled slid intoAngus and stopped.
Mystified, Marcel called: "Marche, Fleur! Marche!" fearing to find,when she rose, that his rock and anchor had suddenly broken on thetrail.
But the great dog, ignoring the command, raised her nose in a low growlas Marcel reached her.
"What troubles you, Fleur?" he asked, on his knees beside her, brushingthe crusted snow from her ears and slant eyes. Again Fleur whinedmysteriously.
"Where ees de pain, Fleur? Get up!" he ordered sharply, thinking tolearn where her iron body had received its hurt. But the dog lay rigid,her throat still rumbling.
"By Gar, dis ees queer t'ing!" muttered Marcel, his mittened hand on themassive head.
Then some strange impulse led him to advance into the black wall, when,with fierce protest, Fleur, jerking Jules to his feet, leaped forward,straining to reach him.
The Frenchman, checked by the dog's action, stared into the darkness,until, at length, he saw that the white tundra at his feet fell awaybefore his snow-shoes and he looked out into gray space.
As he crouched peering ahead, his senses slowly warned him that he stoodon a shoulder of cliff falling sheer to the invisible beach below.
He had driven his dogs to the lip of a ghastly death; and Julie----
Turning back, he flung himself beside the trembling Fleur and with hisarm circling the great neck, kissed the battered nose. Fleur, with theuncanny instinct of the born lead-dog, had scented the open space,divined the danger, had known--and lain down, saving them all.
Swinging his team off the brow of the cliff, he worked back and finallydown to the beach, and his muffled passenger, drowsy, with swiftlynumbing limbs, never knew that he had ridden calmly, that night, out tothe doors of doom.
In the lee of an island Marcel made camp and boiled life-givingtea,--the panacea of the north--and pemmican, on a hot fire, which soonrevived the frozen Hunter.
To his joy, he realized that the back of the blizzard was broken, for asthe wind and snow eased, the temperature rapidly fell to an Arctic cold.With Whale River eighty miles away; his dogs broken by lack of rest andstiff from the wrenching and exhaustion of the battle with the deepsnow; his own legs twinging with "mal raquette"; Marcel thanked God, forthe dawn would see the wind dead and if his team did not fail him, intwo days he would reach the post.
The Whelps of the Wolf Page 40