Part 12 (1/2)

For answer the hot tongue of the dog sought his hands as she raised her brown eyes to his. With arms around her s.h.a.ggy shoulders her proud master muttered into the ears of the delighted husky love words that would have been strange indeed to any but Fleur, who found them sweet beyond measure.

”My Fleur, she grow to be de dog, de most _sauvage_!” he cried. ”Some day she keel de wolf, eh?”

Owing to the weakened condition of the lynx, Fleur's were but surface scratches. So furious had been the husky's a.s.sault on the starved cat that she had left no opening to the knife-like claws of the powerful hind legs.

Continuing east, four days later Marcel camped in a valley on the flank of a great barren. In the morning, tying Fleur with a rawhide thong which she could have chewed through with ease but had been taught to respect, he followed the scrub along the edge of the barren searching for caribou signs. Often he stopped to gaze out across the white waste reaching away east to the horizon, seeking for blue-gray objects whose movements in sc.r.a.ping away the snow to the moss beneath, would alone mark them as caribou. In places the great winds had swept the plateau almost bare, beating down the snow to a depth of less than a foot. All day he skirted the barren but at last turned back to his camp sick at heart and spent with the long day on the crust, following his meagre breakfast. Deep in the shelter of the thick timber of the valley, he had dug away the snow for his fire and sleeping place, las.h.i.+ng above his bed of spruce boughs a strip of canvas which acted both as windbreak and heat reflector. When they had eaten their slim supper, he freshened the fire with birch logs, and sat down with Fleur's head between his knees.

The ”Starving Moon” of the Montagnais hung over Jean Marcel.

”Fleur, you know we got onlee two day meat left? W'en dat go, Jean Marcel go too--een few day, a week maybe; and Fleur, w'at she do?”

The husky's slant eyes shone with her dog love into the set face of her master. She whined, wrinkling her gray nose, then her jaw dropped, which was her manner of laughing, while her hot breath steamed in the freezing air. Vainly she waited for the smile that had never failed to light Marcel's face in the old days at such advances.

Dropping his mittens Jean held the ma.s.sive head between his naked hands.

”Jean Marcel feel ver' bad to leave Fleur alone. Wid no game she starve too, w'en he go,” he said.

Fleur's deep throat rumbled in ecstasy as the hands of the master rubbed her ears.

”Back on de Ghost, Fleur, ees some feesh and meat Joe and Antoine left; not much, but eet tak' us to Whale Riviere, maybe.”

The lips of Fleur lifted from her white teeth at the names of Jean's partners.

”You remember Joe Piquet, Fleur? Joe Piquet!”

The husky growled. She knew only too well the name, Joe Piquet.

”Eet ees four--five sleep to de Ghost, Fleur, shall we go? W'at you t'ink?”

The strained face in the fur-lined hood approached the dog's, whose eyes s.h.i.+fted uneasily from the fixed look of her master.

”We go back to de Ghost, Fleur, or mak' one beeg hunt for de deer?”

The perplexed husky, unable to meet Marcel's piercing eyes, sprang to her feet with a yelp.

”Bon!” he cried. ”We mak' de beeg hunt!” He had had his answer and on the yelp of his dog had staked their fate. To-morrow he would push on into the barrens and find the caribou drifting north again, or flicker out with his dog as men for centuries had perished, beaten by the long snows.

In the morning he divided his remaining food into four parts; a breakfast and a supper for himself and Fleur, for two days. After that--strips of caribou hide and moss, boiled in snow water, to ease the throbbing ache of their stomachs.

Eating his thin stew, he shortened his belt still another hole over his lean waist, and harnessing Fleur, turned resolutely east into country no white man had ever seen, on his bold gamble for food or an endless sleep in the blue Ungava hills.

In his weakened state, black spots and pin-points of light danced before his eyes. Distant objects were often magnified out of all proportion. So intense was the glare of the high March sun on the crust that his wooden goggles alone saved him from snow-blindness. He travelled a few miles until dizziness forced him to rest. Later he continued on, to rest again, while the black nose of Fleur, who was still comparatively strong, sought his face, as she wondered at the reason for the master's strange actions.

By noon he had crossed no trail except that of a wolverine seeking food like himself, and finally went down into the timbered valley of a brook where he left Fleur and the sled. Then he started again on his hopeless search. As the streams flowed northeast, he was certain that he had crossed the Height of Land to the Ungava Bay watershed, and was now in the headwater country of the fabled River of Leaves, the Koksoak of the Esquimos, into which no hunter from Whale River had ever penetrated.

Marcel was snow-shoeing through the scrub at the edge of the plateau when far out on the barren he saw two spots. Shortly he was convinced that the objects moved.

”By Gar, deer! At last they travel nord!” he gasped, gazing with bounding pulses at the distant spots almost indistinguishable against the snow. Meat out there on the barren awaited him--food and life, if only he could get within range.

Cutting back into the scrub, that he might begin his stalk of the caribou from the nearest cover with the wind in his face, he moved behind a rise in the ground slowly out into the barren. With a caution he had never before exercised, lest the precious food now almost within reach should escape him, the starving man advanced.