Breed of the Wolf/Chapter 13

Before dawn, a cold nose nuzzling his face, waked Marcel.

“Fleur hungry? It ees better to sleep w’en dere ees no breakfast,” he protested.

The warm tongue sought the face of the drowsy man, and the dog, not to be put off, thrust her nose roughly into his robe, whimpering as she pulled at his capote.

“Poor Fleur!” he muttered. “No more meat for de pup! Lie down! Jean ees ver’ tired.”

But the dog, bent on arousing the master, grew only the more insistent, seizing his arm in her jaws. As he sat upright, wide awake, Fleur sniffed long at the frosty air, then dashed yelping into the dusk up the trail toward the barren. Turning, she ran back to camp, whining excitedly.

“Eh! W’at you smell, Fleur?” cried Marcel, tearing his rifle with shaking hands from its skin case and cramming cartridges into a pocket. Could it be the deer at last? Only a starving wolf or lynx, prowling near the camp, likely. Still he would go! The love of life was yet strong in Jean Marcel now that a gleam of hope warmed his heart.

Slipping his toes into the thongs of his snowshoes, he made Fleur fast to a tree, and started. He was so weak from lack of food that often he was forced to stop in the climb, shaken by his hammering heart. At last, exhausted, he dragged himself to the shoulder of the barren and moved on unsteady legs along the edge of the scrub, his eyes straining to pierce the wall of dusk which shut the plateau from his sight. But the shadows still blanketed the barren; so testing the light wind, that he might move directly out toward the game when the light grew stronger, he sat down to save his strength for the stalk. Only too clearly his weakness warned him that it was his last hunt. By another day, even though he managed the climb, his trembling hands would prevent the lining of his sights on game.

As opal and rose faintly streaked the east, the teeth of the hunter, as he waited to read the fate daylight would disclose, chattered in the stinging air. He would soon know now whether he were to creep back to his blankets and wait for stark despair to steady the hand which would bring swift release for Fleur and himself, or whether meat, food, life were scraping with round-toed hoofs the snow from the caribou moss out there in the dim dawn.

Daylight filtered over the floor of snow, and as the light at length opened up the treeless miles, a sob shook the lean frame of the hunter. Tears welled in the deep-set eyes to course down and freeze upon his face, for there, on the snow before him, were the blue-gray shapes of caribou at last.

Three deer were feeding almost within range while farther out moving patches marked other bands. At last the spring migration had reached him. He would see Whale River again when June came north. And Fleur, fretting back there in camp at his absence, would revel and grow gigantic on deer meat.

Marcel painfully crawled within easy range of the nearest deer. As he attempted to line his sights in order to hit two with the first shot, as he had often done, the waving of his gun barrel in his trembling hands swept him cold with fear. The exertion of crawling to his position had cruelly shaken his nerves. He rested. Then he carefully took aim. As he fired, his heart skipped a beat, for he thought he had missed. But to his joy a caribou bounded from the snow, ran a few feet and fell, while another, stopping to scent the air before circling upwind, gave him a second shot. The deer was badly hit and the next shot brought it down.

The tension of the crisis passed, the shattered nerves relaxed, and for a space the starving hunter lay limp in the snow. But warned by his rapidly numbing fingers, he forced himself to his feet and went to the deer. Out on the barren, beyond the sound of his rifle, scattered bands of caribou were feeding. Meat to take them through the big break-up of April was at hand. The lean face of Jean Marcel twisted into a grim smile.

He had beaten the long snows.

Stopping only to take the tongues and a piece of haunch, Marcel returned to his hungry dog. Frantic with the faint scent of caribou brought by the breeze, the famished Fleur chafed and fretted for his return.

“Fleur! See what Jean Marcel got for you!”

The husky, maddened by the scent of the bleeding meat, plunged at her leash, her jaws dripping. Throwing her a chunk of haunch which she bolted greedily, Marcel filled his kettle with snow and, putting in a tongue and strips of steak to boil, lay down by his fire.