CHAPTER XVII.
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. 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.
Each day—after the news had once 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. So there was great need for speed, and 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 still 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 now 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 swept his troubled brain clean of dark memory for a while, he dreamed that the water thrushes in the river willows called to him: “Sweet, sweet, sweet, Julie Breton!” He would feel, for a space, 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? As he paddled, he deeply inhaled the scent of the flowering forest world of Northern springtime while his birch bark rode the choked current. And then, the stark realization that he had lost Julie, 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, Marcel at the end of nine days 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.
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?” he asked in French. “The terrible famine did not reach you?”
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,” replied Jean, also in French. “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?”
“Yes, father,” Marcel said quietly. “Joe Piquet was killed by Fleur, here, after he stabbed Antoine!”
“Just Heaven! Killed by Fleur!” He looked at the husky. “What a dog she has grown to be!”
“I wish to tell you all first, father, before I go to the trade house. And Julie?” Jean’s voice was vibrant with fear of what the answer might be.
“Put the dog in the stockade and I will call Julie. We have been very sad here, wondering whether you had starved; the tale Piquet’s uncle, Gaspard Lelac, and his sons brought in day before yesterday made us think you also might have”
“Did they say Antoine had been stabbed?” interrupted Marcel.
“They said they found his body.”
“Where?” demanded Marcel.
“Buried on the river shore!”
“They lie!”
He fully realized that he faced a battle with men who would not scruple to lie when the stark facts already looked bad enough.
“They never were truthful people, my son. We have hoped and prayed for your coming to clear up the mystery.”
Jean put Fleur in the stockade and returned to the house. Julie' Breton stood in the doorway.
“Welcome home, Jean!” she cried, giving him both hands, but did not kiss him on the cheek. “Why—you are not thin!” She looked wonderingly at his face. “We thought—you also—had starved.” Her eyes filled with tears as she gazed at the man already numbered with the dead by his friends at Whale River.
Were these sisterly tears of joy at his safe return or did she weep for the Jean Marcel she once knew, but who was now dishonored?
“There, there! Ma petite!” consoled Père Henri, patting the girl’s dark head. “We have Jean here again, safe. All will be well in time. Julie had you starved out in the bush, Jean, when we heard the Crees’ story.”
But the puzzled youth wondered why Père Henri did not mention the charges that the half-breeds must have made on reaching Whale River.
Recovering her self-control Julie excused herself to prepare supper. Then, before asking what the Lelacs had told the factor, Marcel related to the priest the grim details of the winter on the Ghost—ending with his discovery, on his return to the old camp, of the visit of the Lelacs’ canoe.
“Father, it looks bad for me. They found Antoine stabbed and Piquet’s fur and outfit. I brought his rifle back to the camp and cached it with his stuff and Antoine’s to bring it all downriver in the spring to their people.”
At this the heavy brows of the priest lifted in surprise. Marcel continued:
“The cache was empty. It was a starvation camp. Antoine was dead, and obviously Piquet also, for his outfit was there. Seeing these things, what could any one think? That the third man, Jean Marcel, did this and then went into the barrens for caribou. There he starved out, they would conclude—or else found meat and will return—when he can clear himself if he is able! Father, it was my wish to tell you my story before I heard the tale the Lelacs brought to the post. Then you could judge between us.”
The priest leaned forward in his chair and rested his hands on Marcel’s shoulders. His eyes sought those of the younger man which met his gaze unwaveringly.
“Jean Marcel,” he said, “I have known you since your father brought you to Whale River as a child. You have never lied to me. You have told me the truth. We did not believe that you had killed your comrades. You would have starved first! Nor did Gillies or McCain or Jules believe in the truth of the charge of the Lelacs. They are waiting to hear your story. Also, since hearing your side, I see why the Lelacs are anxious to have it believed at the trade house that you were responsible for the deaths of these men. They are grinding an ax of their own. It is not alone because they are kin of Piquet that they wish to discredit and injure you.”
“How do you mean, father?”
“I will tell you later, my son. You should report at the trade house now.”
Cheered with the knowledge that his old friends were still stanch, Marcel hurried to the trade house. Meeting no one as he passed the scattered tepees, he flung open the slab door of the log building and entered with head high.
“Jean Marcel! By gar, we hear you arrive!” roared the big Jules, rushing upon the youth. “You not starve out, eh?”
Gillies and McCain, wringing his hand, added their welcome.
“Jean, you had a hard winter with the rabbits gone,” suggested Gillies. “You must have found the caribou this spring?”
“Yes, I find de caribou, m’sieu. But I travel far for dem. It was hard time in March.”
“And the dog—you didn’t have to eat your dog, Jean?” asked McCain.
Marcel’s face hardened.
“De dog and Jean, dey feast and dey starve togeder. I am no Cree dog eater. Dat dog she save my life—one, two tam, dees winter, m’sieu.”
Marcel realized that they were waiting to hear his story before alluding to the charges of the half-breed kinsmen of Piquet.
“M’sieu Gillies,” Jean began. “I weesh to tell you what happen on de Ghost. De Lelacs bring a tale to Whale Riviere dat ees not true.”
“We’ve paid no attention to them, Jean, trusting you would show up and could explain it all. I was sorry to hear about Antoine and Piquet but I don’t think you had any part in it, lad—be sure of that!”
“T’anks, m’sieu.” Slowly and in great detail Marcel related to the three men, sitting with set faces, the gruesome history of the past winter. When he came to the night that Fleur had destroyed the crazed Piquet, the Hudson Bay men turned to each other with exclamations of wonder and admiration.
“That’s a dog for you! She got his wind just in time!” muttered Gillies.
“You ask eef I eat her, m’sieu.” Marcel turned on McCain grimly. “Could you eat de dog dat save your life?”
“No, by God! I’d starve first!” thundered the Scotchman.
“I love dat dog,” said Jean quietly.
Then, breathless, his audience heard the rest of his tale. At the end Marcel enumerated in detail the articles belonging to Antoine and Piquet which he had placed on the stage of the cache beside Beaulieu’s body when he left for the Salmon country and which on his return to the Ghost he had found to have been taken by the Lelacs to Whale River.
“I lashed Antoine in hees shed tent and put heem on de cache, for the wolverene and lynx would get heem in de snow.” As Marcel talked McCain and Gillies exchanged significant looks.
“Um!” muttered the factor, when Jean had finished. “Something queer here!”
“What, m’sieu?” Marcel demanded.
“Why, Lelac says he found the body of Antoine buried under stones on the shore and that there was nothing on the cache except the empty grub bags.”
“Dey say de fur and rifle was not dere?”
“Yes, nothing on the cache!”
“Den I must have de rifle and de fur; ees dat it?”
“That’s what they insinuate.”
“Ah-hah!” Marcel scowled. “Dey say dey fin’ noding, so do not turn over to you de rifle and fur pack?”
“Yes—they claim you must have hidden them as you hid the body.”
“Den how do dey know Piquet ees dead, too?” Marcel’s dark features relaxed in a dry smile. It was not, then, solely the desire for vengeance on the murderer of their kin that had prompted the half-breeds to distort the facts.
“They say his extra clothes and his outfit were in the cabin, only his rifle and fur missing. Now, Jean,” continued Gillies, “I am perfectly satisfied with your story. I believe every word of it. The Marcels are not liars. But the Lelacs are going to make trouble over the evidence they found at your camp. Suspicion always points to the survivor in a starvation camp and you know the circumstances are against you, my lad.”
“M’sieu,” Marcel protested, “eef I keel Antoine, I would tak’ heem into de bush and hide heem, I would not worry ovair de fox and wolverene.”
“Of course you would have hidden the body somewhere. We appreciate that. But as they are trying to put this thing on you they ignore that side of it. What you admit they found—Antoine’s body with a stab wound, and Piquet’s outfit, makes it look bad to people who don’t know you as we do. They won’t believe that the famine got Piquet in the head. They’ll say that’s a tale you made up to get yourself off.”
Marcel went hot with anger. His impulse was to seek the Lelacs and have it out, then and there. But he possessed the cool judgment of a long line of ancestors whose lives had often depended on their heads, so he choked back his rage.
“Now I don’t want it carried down the coast that you killed your partners, Jean,” went on Gillies. “Young as you are, you’ll never live it down. And, besides, there’s no knowing what the government might do. I’ll have to make a report, you know. So we’ve got to do some tall thinking between us before the hunters get in.”
While the factor talked, the swift brain of Marcel had struck upon a plan to trap and discredit the Lelacs; but he wished to think it over, alone, before proposing it at the trade house, so held his tongue. When he was ready he would ask the factor to hold a hearing.
One question he did ask before packing his fur and outfit from the beach up to the mission.
“Have de Lelacs traded dere fur, m’sieu?”
“No, we haven’t started the trade yet.”
“W’en dey trade dere fur weel you hold it from de oder fur—separate?”
“Why, yes. But you can’t hope to identify skins, Jean.”
A corner of Marcel’s mouth curled in a quizzical smile. “Wait, M’sieu Gillies; I tell you later,” and with a “Bonsoir!” he went out.