CHAPTER III.
When Marcel put his canoe into the water the following morning, to cross to his net, three young Eskimos who had been loitering near Kovik’s lodge followed him to the beach and, as he left the shore, hurled at his back a torrent of Husky abuse.
It would have been better to listen to Kovik’s warning against delaying his departure and attempting to fish at the rapids after the salmon arrived. The use of the boy’s spear, the day previous, had brought the feeling among the younger men to a head. They meant to drive him downriver.
Removing the whitefish and small salmon, Jean lifted his net and, stretching it to dry on the shore, recrossed the river. On the beach awaiting his return were the Huskies. Clearly, they had decided that he was possessed of no supernatural powers and could now be bullied with impunity. As he did not wish to embroil his friend Kovik in his defense, he had decided that when he had smoked his last catch he would leave. Nevertheless, the blood of the fighting Marcels was slowly coming to a boil. If these raw fish eaters thought that they could frighten the grandson of the famous Etienne Lacasse, or the son of André Marcel, he could, if necessary, show them their mistake.
Ignoring the Huskies, Marcel landed, cleaned some fish for Kovik’s kettle, and carried them up to the tepee where the family were still asleep. When he returned, the hot blood rose to his bronzed face at what he saw. The three Eskimos were coolly feeding his fish to the dogs.
In the blind rage which choked him, Marcel reached the pilferers of his canoe before they realized that he was on them. Seizing one by his long hair, he wrenched the surprised Husky backward into the water and sent a second reeling to the stony beach with a blow in the face. The third, retreating from the fury of the attack of the maddened white man, drew his skinning knife; but seizing his paddle, Marcel sent the knife spinning with a vicious slash which doubled the screaming Husky over a broken wrist. Turning, he saw his first victims making down the beach toward the tepees, while the uproar of the dogs was swiftly arousing the camp.
As his blood cooled, the youth, who had suffered and dared much that he might have dogs for the next long snows, realized his folly. They had baited him into furnishing them with an excuse for attacking him.
He would never see Whale River and Julie Breton again. Now, even the faithful Kovik would be helpless against them. Already the Huskies were emerging from their tepees to hear the tale of his late antagonists. He had no time to lose before they would be rushing him.
Bounding up the beach to Kovik’s tepee for his rifle, he rapidly explained the situation to the Eskimo. Jean did not hope to escape alive, but of one thing he was sure—he would die like a Marcel with a gun in his hands.
Urging Jean to get his fur pack and smoked fish to his canoe at once, Kovik hurried down the shore to the knot of wildly excited Eskimos. Meanwhile, with the aid of Kovik’s grateful wife and son, Marcel’s canoe was swiftly loaded and his treasured puppy lashed in the bow.
The rush up the beach of an infuriated throng bent on his death was delayed. Not a hundred yards distant, the doughty Kovik, the center of an arguing mob, was fighting with all the wits he possessed for the man who had saved his son. For Marcel to attempt to escape by water would only have drawn the fire of the Huskies and nullified Kovik’s efforts. Besides, their kayaks, faster than any canoe, were below him. A break for the “bush,” even if successful, meant starvation in the end. So with extra cartridges between his teeth and in his hands, Jean Marcel grimly fingered the trigger guard of his rifle, as he waited beside a bowlder for the turn of the dice.
Kovik still held his men, and Marcel clearly noted a change in the manner of the Huskies. The shouting had ceased. Shortly, Kovik left the group and walked rapidly toward Marcel, followed at a distance by his people.
“Dey keel you, but Kovik say you fr’en’ wid spirit who would come downriv’ an’ eat Husky,” explained the worried defender of Jean. “Kovik say you shoot wid spirit gun all de Husky. Now you go—queek!” Kovik gripped the hand of the relieved Marcel and pushed off his canoe.
With the emotions of a man suddenly reprieved from a sentence of death, Marcel poled his canoe out into the current. The Eskimos had joined Kovik on the shore behind him, when, warned by a shout from his friend, Marcel instinctively ducked, as a seal spear whistled over his head. Some doubter was testing the magic of the white man.
Seizing his paddle, Jean rapidly crossed the river and secured his precious net; but he was not yet rid of his enemies. If the young men, conquering their fear of his friendship with demons, at once launched their kayaks they could overhaul his loaded canoe. Once clear of the last tepees on the shore, though, and with his pursuers behind him, he was confident that he could pick them off with his rifle as they came up in their rocking craft.
With all his power Jean drove his canoe with the swift current. Kovik had the Huskies in hand and they did not follow, and shortly he had passed the last lodge on the shore and the camp was far behind him. It seemed like a dream—his peril of the last half hour. But now, with his puppy in the bow, he was safe on his way to the coast.
Suddenly Marcel was wrenched from his dream by stark reality as two rifle shots cracked on the near shore. Dropping his paddle, he lurched forward in the canoe. Again the rifles spat from the bowlders on the beach. Two bullets whined over the birch bark. But except for the yelping puppy in the bow, there was no movement in the canoe as it slid along the cat’s-paw of the current.
Waving their arms in triumph at the collapse of the feared white man whose magic had been impotent before their bullets, the Huskies hurried alongshore after the canoe. Carried by breeze and current, with its whimpering puppy and silent human freight, the craft grounded a half mile below the ambush. The chattering pair of assassins, hurrying toward it were already quarreling over the division of the outfit of the dead man. The dog, although lashed to the bow thwart, had managed to crawl out of the boat and was struggling with the thongs which held her, when the Huskies came running up. Looking into the birch bark, they turned on each other gray faces on which was written ghastly fear.
The canoe was empty!
The white man they had thought to find a bloodied heap was after all a maker of magic—a friend of demons. Kovik had told the truth. They were lost! Struck motionless by terror, their feet frozen to the beach, the young ruffians awaited the swift vengeance of their enemy. And it came.
A rifle crashed in the bowlders hard by. With a scream, a Husky reeled backward with a shattered hand, as his gun, torn from his grasp by the impact of the bullet, rattled on the stones. A second shot, splintering the butt of his rifle, hurled the other to his knees. Then with a demoniacal yell, Marcel sprang from his ambush.
Running like a caribou jumped by barren-ground wolves, the panic-stricken Huskies fled from the place of horror, pursued by the ricocheting bullets of the white demon, until they disappeared up the shore.
“Till we meet, m’sieurs!” cried Marcel. “De nex’ tam you ambush cano', don’ let it drif’ behin’ de point.” Shaking with laughter, he turned to his yelping puppy. “De Husky t’ink dey keep us from goin’ to Whale Riviere, eh?” he said, soothing the worrying dog with the stroking of her trembling shoulders. “But Jean and hees leetle dog, dey go to see Julie Breton!”
When the shots from the ambush had whined past his face, Marcel had flattened in the canoe both for cover and to deceive the Huskies. The second shots convinced him that he had but two men to deal with. Slitting the bark near the gunwale that he might watch the shore without betraying the fact that he was conscious and thereby draw their fire while they were protected from his by the bowlders, he saw that his craft was working toward the beach.
Driven by the current, the canoe had already left the Eskimos in the rear. When it finally grounded on the beach it was at a point hidden from the pursuing Huskies. Marcel was out of the craft in a bound and concealed himself among the rocks. Then, great as had been the temptation to leave the men who had ambushed him dead upon the beach, a warning to their fellows, the thought of Kovik’s position at the camp had led him to content himself with disarming them and sending them shrieking up the river shore with his bullets hard at their heels.
During the rest of the day, as Jean Marcel put mile after mile of the Salmon between himself and the camp at the rapids, the puppy often cocked curious ears as the new master ceased paddling to roar with laughter at the memory of two flying Eskimos.