CHAPTER XXIX.
Two days before Christmas the team of Jean Marcel, its harness brave with colored worsted, jingled gayly past sleep house and tepees, and drew up before the log trade house at Whale River.
“Welcome, Jean. It ees well dees Chreesmas you come.” The grave face of Jules
Duroc checked the jest on Marcel’s lips as he shook his friend’s hand.
“You are sad, my friend; what has happened to the merry Jules?” Jean asked.
“Ah, Jean Marcel! Dere ees bad news for you at Whale River.”
Across Marcel’s brain flashed the memory of his dreams. Julie! His speeding heart shook him as an engine a boat. His lips twitched, but from them came no words as his questioning eyes held those of Jules.
“Yes, it ees as you t’ink, Jean Marcel. She ees ver’ seek.”
Marcel’s hands closed on Jules’ arms.
“Mon Dieu! W’at ees it, Jules?” he demanded. “Tell me, w’at ees it?”
“She has de bad arm. Cut de han’ wid a knife.”
Blood poisoning, because of his medical ignorance, held less terror for Marcel than some strange fever, insidious and mysterious. He had feared that Julie Breton had a dread disease against which the crude skill of the North is helpless. As he hastened to the mission where he found Mrs. Gillies in stalled as nurse, his hopes rose, for surely a wound in the hand could not be fatal!
From the anxious-eyed Père Breton, who met him at the door, Jean learned the story.
Ten days before Julie had cut her hand with a knife while preparing frozen fish for cooking. For days she had ignored the wound, when the hand, suddenly reddening, began to swell, causing much pain. Gillies and her brother had opened the inflamed wound, cleansing it with bichloride, but in spite of their efforts, the swelling had increased, advancing to the elbow.
She was now running a high fever, suffering great pain and frequently delirious. They realized that the proper treatment was an opening of the lymphatic glands of the forearm and elbow to reach the poison slowly working upward, but did not dare attempt it. The priest told Marcel that in such cases if the poison was not absorbed into the circulation or reached by operation, it would extend to the armpit, then to the neck, with fatal termination.
Jean Marcel listened with head in hands to the despairing brother. Then:
“Is there at Fort George or East Main no one who could help her?”
“At Fort George, Monsieur Hunter, who has been lately ordered there to the Protestant church, is a medical missionary. We learned this to-day when the Christmas mail arrived. But they were five days coming from Fort George with their poor dogs. It will take you eight days to make the round trip, and even in a week it may be too late—too late” He finished with a groan.
“Father, I will go and bring this missionary. I shall return before a week.”
“God speed you, my son! The mail team is worn out and we were sending a team of the Crees, but they have no dogs like ours.”
Mrs. Gillies led Marcel into Julie Breton’s room and left them. On her white bed, with wayward masses of dusky hair tumbled on her pillow, lay Julie Breton, moaning low in the delirium of high fever. On a pillow at her side lay her bandaged left arm. As Marcel looked long at the flushed face with its parted lips murmuring incoherently, the muscles of his jaw flexed through the frost-blackened skin as he clenched his teeth at his helplessness to aid her—this stricken girl for whom he would have given his life.
Then he knelt and, lifting the limp hand on the coverlet, pressed it long to his lips, rose, and went out.
First feeding and loosing his dogs in the stockade, Marcel hurried to the trade house. There he obtained from Jules five days’ rations of whitefish for the dogs, and some, pemmican, hard bread, and tea.
“You t’ink you can mak’ For’ George in t’ree day?” Jules shook his head doubtfully. “It nevaire been made in t’ree day, Jean.”
“No one evair before on de east coast travel as I travel, Jules,” was the low reply.
Gillies, Père Breton, and McCain entered the room, talking earnestly, and overheard Marcel’s words.
“Welcome back, Jean; you are going to Fort George instead of Baptiste?” asked Gillies, shaking Marcel’s hand.
“Yes, m’sieu, my team ees stronger team dan Baptiste’s.”
“When do you start?”
“In leetle tam; I jus’ feed my dogs.”
“Are they in good shape? They must be tired from the river trail.”
“Dey will fly, m’sieu.”
“Thank God for that.”
“M’sieu,” said Marcel quietly, “my dogs will mak’ Fort George in t’ree days.”
“It’s never been done, Jean, but I hope you will.”
When Marcel brought his refreshed dogs to the trade house an hour later for his rations, a silent group of men awaited him. As Fleur trotted up, ears pricked, mystified at being routed out and harnessed in the dark, after she had eaten and curled up for the night, they were inspected by the factor.
“Why, the pups have grown inches since you left here in August, Jean. They’re almost as big as Fleur, now,” said Gillies, throwing the light from his lantern on the team.
“Dat two rear dog look lak’ timber wolves,” cried Jules, as Colin and Angus turned their red-lidded, amber eyes lazily toward him, opening cavernous mouths in wide yawns, for they were still sleepy. Fleur, alive to the subdued tones of Jean Marcel and sensing something unusual, nuzzled her master’s hand for answer.
“What a team! What a team!” exclaimed McCain. “They ought to walk away with a thousand pounds. Are they fast, Jean?”
“W’en you see me again, m’sieu, you will know how fast dey are! A’voir!” Marcel gripped the hands of the others, then turned to Père Breton.
“Father,” he said, “if she should wake and can understand, tell her—tell her to wait—a little longer till Jean and Fleur return. If—if she—cannot wait for us—tell her that Fleur and Jean Marcel will follow her—out to the sunset.”
With the crack of his whip, as he turned away, came his curt “Marche, Fleur!” and he disappeared with his dogs into the night.