CHAPTER VII.
A day’s hard paddle past Big Island the dreaded Cape of the Four Winds thrust its bold buttresses far out into the sea. Marcel knew that wind here meant days of delay, for no canoe could round this grim head land feared by all voyageurs, except in fair weather. So, after a few hours’ sleep, he toiled all day down the coast and at mid night had put the gray cape behind him.
Two days later when Marcel went ashore on the Isle of Graves, of the Eskimos, to boil his kettle, he found to his delight a Fort George goose boat on the same errand. The Crees who had just left the post to shoot the winter’s supply of gray and snowy geese, or “wavies,” as they are called from their resemblance in flight to a white banner waving in the sun, had met, two nights before, off the mouth of Big River, the canoe he was following. The dog thieves, who were strangers, did not stop at the post, but had continued south.
With two paddles they were not holding their lead, he laughed to himself, but were coming back. If he hurried he would over haul them before they reached Rupert. As he did not know the Rupert River and realized that if once they started inland he would be caught by the freeze-up in a strange country, he continued his voyaging late on into the night.
Then followed day after day of endless toil at the paddle, for he knew he must travel while the weather held. He could not hope to make Rupert or even East Main before the wind changed—which might mean idling for days on a beach pounded by seas in which no canoe could live. At times, with a stern breeze, he rigged a piece of canvas to a spruce pole and sailed.
Only through necessity did he stop to shoot geese. He was hunting bigger game and his heart hungered for his puppy, beaten and half starved, in all likelihood, traveling somewhere ahead-down that bleak coast in the canoe of two men who did not know that close on their heels followed an enemy as dogged, as relentless, as a wolf on the trail of an old caribou abandoned by the herd.
After days of ceaseless dip and swing, dip and swing, which at night left his back and arms stiff and his fingers numb, Jean Marcel turned into the mouth of the East Main River and paddled up to the post. There he learned that the canoe of the half-breeds had not been seen, and that no hunters of their description traded there. So he turned again to the bay and headed south for Rupert House. Off the Wild Geese Islands, he met what he had for days been dreading, the first September northwester, and was driven ashore.
For the following three days he rested and hunted geese. When the storm whipped itself out he went on and at last crossing Boatswain’s Bay, rounded Mount Sherrick and paddled up Rupert Bay to the famous old post, which, since the days of the Merry Monarch and his favorite, Prince Rupert, the first governor of the “Company of Merchants-Adventurers trading into Hudson Bay,” has guarded the river mouth—an uninterrupted history of two centuries and a half of fair dealing with the red fur hunters of Rupert Land.
“So you’re the son of André Marcel? Well, well! Time does fly! Why, André and I made many a camp together in the old days. There was a man, my lad!”
Jean straightened his wide shoulders in pride at this praise of his father by Alec Cameron, factor at Rupert. When he had explained the object of his long journey south in the fall, the latter raised his bushy eyebrows in amazement.
“You mean to tell me that you paddled from Whale River in fifteen days after a dog?”
“Yes, M’sieu Cameron.”
“Well, you didn’t waste the daylight or the moon, either. You’re sure a chip of the old block. It must be a record for a single paddle; and all for a pup, eh?”
“Yes—all for a pup!”
“You deserve to get that dog. These half-breeds you describe, by the way, dropped in here back in June behind the Mistassini brigade and traded their fur.”
“Dey were onlee a day ahead of me up de coast.”
“Queer I haven’t seen ’em here, yet, Pierre!” Cameron called to a company man passing the trade house. “Have those two Mistassini strangers, who went north in June, got back yet?”
“No, but Albert meet dem in Gull Bay two day back. Dey have one pup dey get from Huskee!”
“There you are, Marcel! Your men crossed over to Hannah Bay to hunt geese. They’ll be here in a week or two on their way upriver. You wait here and we’ll get your dog when they show up.”
“T’anks, M’sieu Cameron!” The dark eyes of Jean Marcel snapped. At last he was closing in on his quarry. “I weel go to Hannah Bay now and get my dog.”
“Two to one, lad? They may get the best of you! And I’ve no men to spare. Better wait here.”
“M’sieu, André Marcel would go alone and tak’ his dog. I, hees son, also weel tak’ mine.”
“Good Lord! André Marcel would have skinned them alive—those two. Well, good luck, Jean! But I don’t like your tackling those breeds alone.”
Jean shook hands with the factor.
“Bonjour, M’sieu Cameron, and t’anks!”
“If you don’t drop in here on your way back, give my regards to Gillies and his family—and be careful,” said the factor, as Marcel left him.
Two days later, after rounding Point Comfort, Marcel was crossing the mud flats of Gull Bay. At last the stalk was on, for somewhere in the vast marshes of the Hannah Bay coast camped the men he had followed four hundred miles to meet face to face and fight for his dog. Somewhere ahead, through the gray mist, back in the juniper and alder scrub beyond the wide reaches of tide flats and goose grass, was Fleur, a prisoner.
That night in camp at East Point, while he cleaned the action and bore of his rifle, the clatter of the geese in the muskeg behind the far lines of spruce edging the marshes filled him with wonder. Never on the bold east coast had he heard such a din of geese gathering for the long flight. At dawn, for it was windy, lines of gray Canadas, bound out to the shoals, waked him with their clamor.
The tide was low, and he carried his canoe across the mud flats. As he poled his canoe south through the shoals, he saw idling everywhere along the bars and sand spits the gray Canadas, always with an erect, keen-eyed sentinel on guard. Farther out, white islands of snowy geese flashed in the sun, as here and there a wavy raised on the water to flap his black-tipped wings. Just in from their arctic breeding grounds, they were lingering for a month’s feast on toothsome south-coast goose grass before seeking their winter home on the great Gulf two thousand miles away.
Slowly throughout the morning Marcel traveled along the mud flats bared for miles by the retreating tide. At times the breeze carried to his ears the faint sound of firing; but there were goose boats from Moose and Rupert House on the coast and it meant little. That night as the tide covered the marshes he ran up a channel of the Harricanaw delta, seeking a camp ground on its higher shores. Having landed, he was looking for driftwood for his fire when, suddenly, he stopped.
“Ah! You have been here, my fr’en’s!”
In the soft mud of the shore ran the clearly marked tracks of a man and dog. The footprints of the dog seemed large for Fleur, but Marcel had not seen her in six weeks, and the puppy was growing fast.
“Fleur!” he said aloud. “Weel you remember Jean Marcel after all these weeks wid dem?”
He had seen no smoke of a fire and the tracks were at least two days old. His men were doubtless on the west shore of the bay where the rank grass grew to the height of a man’s head; but he would find them. The guns of the hunters would betray their whereabouts.
At last he had reached the end of the trail. To the thief, the law of the North is ruthless, and ruthlessly Jean Marcel was prepared to exact, if need be, the last drop of the blood of these men in payment for this act. It was now his nerve and wit against theirs, with Fleur as the stake.
Before dawn Jean was taking advantage of the high tide and, when the first light streaked the east, was well on his way. As the sun lifted over the muskeg behind the bay he saw, hanging in the still air, the smoke of a fire.
He ran his canoe up a waterway and into the long grass. There he waited until the tide went out, listening to the faint reports of the guns of the hunters. At noon, having eaten some cold goose and bannock, he took his rifle and started back over the marsh. Slowly he worked his way, keeping to the cover of the grass and alders, circling around the wide, open spaces, pock-marked with water holes and small ponds.
Knowing that the breeds would not take the dog with them to their blinds but would tie her up, he planned to stalk the camp up wind, in order not to alarm Fleur who might betray his presence to his enemies, if by accident they were in camp in the afternoon when the geese were moving. At last he lay within sight of the tent, which was pitched on a tongue of high ground running out into the rush-covered mud flats. The camp was deserted. His eyes strained wistfully for the sight of the shaggy shape of his puppy, and pain stabbed at his heart. She was not there. Distant shots from the marsh to the west marked the absence of at least one of the breeds. But where was Fleur?
Marcel was too “bush-wise” to take any chances. Still keeping to cover, he made his approach up wind until he lay within a stone’s throw of the tent. Then a shift in the breeze warned a certain pair of keen nostrils that some living thing skulked not far off, and the heart of Jean Marcel leaped as the howl of Fleur betrayed his presence. Grasping his rifle, he waited. The uproar of the dog brought no response. Evidently the breeds were both away, so, rising, he ran to the excited puppy lashed to a stake back of the tent.
“Fleur! Ma leetle dog!” Dropping his rifle, he approached her with outstretched arms. With flattened ears, the puppy crouched, growling at the stranger, her mane bristling. “Fleur! Don’t you know me, pup?”
The puppy’s ears went forward. She sniffed long at the outstretched hand that had once caressed her. Slowly, the growl died in her throat.
“Fleur! Fleur! My poor puppy! Don’t you remember Jean Marcel?”
Again the puzzled dog drew deep whiffs through her black nostrils. Back in her brain memory was at work. The voice of Marcel stirred the ghosts of other days, vague hints, blurred by the cruelty of weeks, of a time when the hand of a master caressed her and did not strike, when a voice called to her as this voice. Then another sniff, and she knew! She whimpered and her warm tongue licked his hand, and Jean Marcel had his puppy in his arms. Mad with joy, the yelping husky strained at her rawhide bonds as her anxious master examined a great lump on her head and felt her ribs, ridged with welts from kick and blow.
“So dey tie her up and beat her, my Fleur! Weel, she not leave Jean Marcel again. W’ere I go, Fleur go!”
“W’at you do wid dat dog?”
He had scarcely had time to hear the hissed words when a fierce blow on the back of his head hurled him flat on his face.
For a space he lay stunned, his numbed senses blurred beyond thought or action. Then, as his dazed brain cleared, the realization that life hung on his presence of mind, for he would receive no mercy from the thieves, held him limp on the ground, as though unconscious.
Snarling curses at the crumpled body of his victim, the half-breed was busy with the joining of some rawhide thongs. Jean cautiously raised an eyelid. The breed was bending over him with a looped thong. Not a muscle moved as the Frenchman waited. Nearer leaned the thief. He reached to slip the looped rawhide over one of Marcel’s outstretched hands, when, with a lunge from the ground, the arms of the latter clamped on the breed’s legs like a sprung trap, and the surprised thief was thrown heavily.
Then began a battle in which quarter was neither asked nor given. Heavier, but slower than the younger man, the thief vainly sought to reach Marcel’s throat, for the Frenchman’s arms, having the under grip, blocked the half-breed from Jean’s knife and his own. Over and over they rolled, locked together, so evenly matched in strength that neither could free a hand. Near them, yelped Fleur frantic with excitement, plunging at her stake.
Then the close report of a gun sounded in Marcel’s ears and a great fear swept him. The absent thief was working back to camp. It was a matter of minutes. Was it for this that he had toiled down the coast in search of his dog—for a grave in the Harricanaw mud?
Desperate with the knowledge that he must win quickly, if at all, he strained until the fingers of his left hand just reached the haft of the breed’s knife; then the teeth of the man under him bit through Jean’s shirt into his shoulder and he lost his grip. Maddened by the pain, he wrenched his right arm free and had his hand on the haft of his own knife before the grip of the thief closed on his wrist—holding the blade in the sheath. Then began a duel of sheer strength. For a time the straining arms lifted and pushed at a deadlock. With veins swelling on neck and forehead Marcel fought to unsheath his knife, but the half-breed’s arm was iron, and did not give. Again a gun was fired—still nearer the camp.
With help at hand, the thief, safe so long as he held his grip, snarled in triumph in the ear of his trapped enemy. But increasing peril only increased the Frenchman’s strength. With a fierce heave of the shoulders his hand gripping the knife moved up ward The arm of the thief gave way, only to straighten. Then, with a wrench that would not be denied, Jean tore the blade from its sheath.
Frantic and white with sudden fear, the breed fought the sinewy wrist advancing inexorably on its grim mission. In short jerks, Marcel hunched the knife toward its goal. The knotted features of the one who felt death creeping to him, inch by inch, went gray. The hand gripping Marcel’s dripped with sweat. Panting hoarsely, like a beast at bay, the thief twisted and writhed from the pitiless steel. Then in his ears rang the voice of the approaching hunter. With a cry of despair, the doomed half-breed called to the man who had come too late. Already the knuckles of Marcel were high on his ribs. With a final wrench the blade was lunged home.
The man’s last cry was smothered in a cough. He gasped, quivered convulsively; then lay still.
Bathed in sweat, shaking from the strain and exertion of the long battle, Marcel got stiffly to his feet and seized his rifle. Again the camp was hailed from the marsh. It was evident that the goose hunter had not sensed the cry of his partner or he would not have betrayed his position. Doubtless he was poling up a reed-masked waterway with a load of geese.
Jean smiled grimly, for the thief would have only his shotgun loaded with fine shot, for large shot is not used for geese in the North. Hurriedly searching the tent, he found a rifle which he threw into the rushes; then he loosed Fleur. The approaching half-breed was in his power. But Jean wanted no prisoner. To stay and beat this man as Fleur had been beaten, would have been sweet, but of blood he had had enough. For an instant his eyes rested on the ghastly evidence of his visit, awaiting the return of the hunter, then he took Fleur and started across the marsh to his canoe. As for the man who was coming, when he found his dead partner, fear of an ambush would prevent him from following their trail.
Reaching his canoe, Jean divided a goose with Fleur and, when it became dark, started for East Point. That the half-breed’s partner would attempt to follow him and seek revenge he had no doubt. With the shotgun alone, though—Jean had thrown away the only rifle at their camp—the thief’s sole chance would be to stalk Marcel while he slept. But as the sea was flat and the tide ebbing, Jean was confident that daylight would find him well up the coast toward Point Comfort.