Breed of the Wolf/Chapter 1

HE solitudes of the east coast had shaken off the grip of the long snows. A thousand streams and rivers choked with snow water from bleak Ungava hills plunged and foamed and raced into the west, seeking the salt Hudson Bay, the “Big Water” of the Crees. In the lakes the honeycombed ice was daily fading under the strengthening sun. Already, here and there the buds of the willows reddened the river shores, while the southern slopes of sun-warmed ridges were softening with the pale green of the young leaves of birch and poplar. Long since the armies of the snowy geese had passed, bound for far arctic islands; while marshes and muskegs were vocal with the raucous clamor of the nesting gray goose.

And one day, with the spring, there returned Jean Marcel from his camp on the Ghost River, the northernmost tributary of the Great Whale—returned to the bald ridge where in March he had seen the sun glitter on a broad expanse of level snow unbroken by trees in the hills to the north. His eyes had not deceived him. The lake was there.

From his commanding position on the bare brow of the isolated mountain, he looked out on a wilderness of timbered valleys and high barrens which rolled away endlessly into the north. Among these lay a large body of water partly free of ice. Into the northeast he could trace the divide—even make out where a small feeder of the Ghost headed on the height of land. And he now knew that he looked upon the dread valleys of the forbidden country of the Crees—the demon-haunted solitudes of the land of the “Windigo,” whose dim, blue hills guarded a region of mystery and terror—a wilderness, peopled in the tales of the medicine man with giant eaters of human flesh and spirits of evil. For generations it had been taboo to the hunters of Whale River.

There was no doubt of it. The large lake he saw was a headwater of the Big Salmon River, the southern sources of which tradition placed in the Bad Lands north of the Ghost. Once his canoe floated in this lake, he could work into the main river and find the Eskimos on the coast.

“So!” muttered the Frenchman, “I go!”

Two days later, back in camp on the Ghost, Marcel announced to his partners, Antoine Beaulieu and Joe Piquet, his intention of returning to the bay by the Big Salmon.

“W’at you say, Jean? You go home tru de Windigo countree?” cried Piquet, his swart face blanched by the fear which the very mention of the forbidden land aroused, while Antoine, speechless, stared wide-eyed at Marcel.

“Oui, nord of de divide, I see beeg lak’. It ees Salmon water for sure. I portage cano’ to dat lak’ an’ reach de coast by de riviere. You go wid me an’ get some dog?” Marcel smiled coolly into the sober faces of his friends.

“Are you crazee, Jean Marcel?” protested Antoine. “De spirit have run de game an’ feesh away. De Windigo eat you before you fin’ de Salmon Riviere, an’ eef he not get you first, you starve.”

“Ver’ well, you go back by de Whale; I go by Salmon an’ meet de Husky. I nevaire hunt anoder long snow widout dogs.”

“Ah-hah! Dat ees good joke! You weel nevaire see de Husky,” broke in Piquet. “W’en Matchi-Manitou ees tru wid you, de raven an’ wolf peek your bones, w’ile Antoine an’ Joe dance at de spreeng trade wid de Cree girl.”

Ignoring the dire prediction, Marcel continued: “Good dog are all gone from de maladie, at Whale Riviere Post. De Husky have plenty dog. I meet dem on de coast before dey reach Whale Riviere an’ dey want too much fur for dem. Maybe I starve; maybe I drown in de strong water; maybe de Windigo get me; but I go”

And he did.

With a shrug of contempt for the tales of the medicine men, Marcel started the following day.

“Bo’-jo’, Antoine!” he said, as he gripped his friend’s hand. “I meet you at Whale Riviere.”

The face of Beaulieu only too patently reflected his thoughts as he shook his head.

“Bo’-jo’, Jean, I nevaire see you again.”

“You are dead man, Jean,” added Piquet. “We tell Julie Breton dat your bones lie up dere.” And the half-breed pointed north to the dim, blue hills of dread.

So with fur pack and outfit, and as much smoked caribou as he dared carry, Marcel poled his canoe up the Ghost, later to portage across the divide into the trailless land where, in the memory of living man, the feet of no hunter of the Hudson’s Bay Company had strayed.

It was a reckless venture—this attempt to reach the bay through an unknown country. The demons of the Cree conjurers he did not fear, for his father and his mother’s father, who had journeyed, starved, and feasted in trailless lands, from Labrador to the great Barren Grounds, had never seen one or heard the wailing of the Windigo in the night. What he did fear was the possibility of weeks of wandering in his search for the main stream, lost in a labyrinth of headwater lakes where game might be scarce and fish difficult to net. His smoked meat would take him but a short way. Then his rifle and net would have to see him through.

But the risk was worth taking. If he could reach the Eskimos on their spring journey south to the post, before they learned of the scarcity of dogs at Whale River, he could obtain huskies at a fair trade in fur. And a dog team was his heart’s desire.

Portaging over the divide to the large lake, Marcel followed its winding outlet into the northwest. There were days when, baffled by a maze of water routes in a network of lakes, he despaired of finding the main stream. There were nights when he lay supperless by his fire thinking of Julie Breton, the black-eyed sister of the Oblat missionary at Whale River—nights when the forebodings of his partners returned to mock him as a maniacal mewing broke the silence of the forest, or there drifted across the valleys low wailing sobs like the grieving of a Cree mother for her dead child.

But in the veins of Jean Marcel coursed the blood of old “runners of the woods.” His parents, victims of the influenza which had swept the coast the year previous, had left him the heritage of a dauntless spirit. Lost and starving though he was, he smiled grimly as the mating wolverene and the lynx turned the night into what would have been a thing of horror to the superstitious breeds.

When, gaunt from toil and the lack of food, Marcel finally found the main stream and shot a bear, he knew he would reach the Eskimos. Two hundred miles of racing river he rapidly put behind him and one June day rounded the bend above a long white water. He ran the rapids, rode the “boilers” at the foot of the last pitch, and shot into deep water again. But as he swung inshore to rid the craft of the slop picked up in the churning “strong water” behind him, Marcel’s eyes widened in surprise. He was nearer the sea than he had guessed. His last rapids had been run. He had reached his goal. On the shore stood the squat skin lodges of an Eskimo camp, and moving about on the beach, he saw the shaggy objects of his quest.

The lean face of the youth who had bearded the dreaded Windigo in their lair took on a smile. He, too, would dance at the spring trade at Whale River—and lashed to stakes by his tent in the post clearing, a pair of priceless Ungavas would add their howls to the general chorus when the dogs pointed their noses at the new moon.