Breed of the Wolf/Chapter 22

The trading room at Whale River was crowded with the treaty chiefs and older men among the Cree hunters chosen by the factor to be present at the hearing. Behind a huge table made from hewn spruce slabs sat Inspector Wallace, Colin Gillies, and McCain. In front and to one side were the swart half-breeds, Gaspard Lelac and his two sons. Facing them on the opposite side of the table was Jean Marcel, and behind him Père Breton, with Julie; for she had insisted on being present, and the smitten Wallace had readily agreed. The remainder of the room was occupied by the Crees, expectant, consumed with curiosity, for it had leaked out that certain matters connected with the tragedy on the Ghost and heretofore undivulged would that afternoon be given light.

Among the assembled half-breeds and Crees there were two distinct factions; those who had readily accepted the story of the Lelacs with its sinister indictment of Marcel—among whom were the kinsmen of Antoine Beaulieu; and those who, knowing Jean Marcel as well as his unsavory accusers, had refused to accept the half-breeds’ tale, and were waiting with eagerness to hear Marcel’s defense. Outside the trade house chattering groups of young men and Cree women were gathered awaiting the outcome of the proceedings.

Rising, Colin Gillies called for silence and addressed the threes in their picturesque tongue.

“The long snows have come and gone. Famine and suffering have again visited the hunters of Whale River. With the return of the rabbit plague and the lack of deer, many of those who were here last year at the spring trade have gone to join their fathers. The company is sad that its hunters and their families have suffered. Last autumn, three hunters went from this post to winter on the Ghost River. This spring but one returned. He is here now, for the reason that he traveled far into the great barrens to streams which join the Big Water many, many sleeps to the northeast, where at last he found the returning deer.

“This spring, when the Ghost was free of ice, Gaspard Lelac and his sons, wishing to visit their kinsman, Joe Piquet, traveled to the camp of the three hunters. What they found there they will now tell as they told it to me when they came to Whale River. After you have learned their story, Jean Marcel, the man who returned, will relate what happened on the Ghost under the moons of the long snows.

“The company has sent to visit Whale River its chief of the east coast, Inspector Wallace. He will hear the stories of these men and decide which of them speaks with a double tongue. It is for you, also, when they have spoken, to say whether Gaspard Lelac and his sons bring the truth to Whale River, or Jean Marcel. You know these men. Hear their talk and judge in your hearts between them. Gaspard Lelac has put the blood of Antoine Beaulieu, and Joe Piquet on the head of Jean Marcel. The fathers at Ottawa and the chiefs of the company at Winnipeg will not suffer one of their children to go unpunished who takes the life of another.

“Listen to the speech of these men. Look with your eyes into their faces and upon what will be shown here, and judge who speaks evil and who from an honest heart. Gaspard Lelac will now tell what he saw and did.”

As Gillies finished, a murmur of approval filled the room, followed by a tense silence.

Lelac, a grizzled French half-breed with small, closely set eyes which shifted here and there as he spoke, then rose and told in the Cree tongue the story he had retailed daily for the previous month.

Wishing to visit his nephew Piquet, he said, and learn how he had weathered the hard winter, Lelac and his sons in May had poled up the Ghost to the camp. There they found an empty cache and part of the outfits of Beaulieu and Piquet, the latter of which they at once recognized. Alarmed, they searched the vicinity of the camp and by chance discovered the body of Beaulieu buried under stones on the shore. There was a knife wound in his chest. They continued the search in hope of finding Piquet, as his blankets and outfit, evidently unused for months and eaten by mice, were strong proof of his death, also; but failed to find the body. Of the fur packs and rifles of the two men, there was no trace, but a knife, identified later as belonging to Antoine, they brought back. There were no signs of the third man’s outfit about the camp. If the third man was alive, what were they to believe? Antoine was dead, and Piquet, also, for his blankets were there. Some one had killed Antoine and Piquet. There was but one other—Marcel. So they traveled to Whale River with the news.

The sons of Lelac glibly corroborated the story of their father. When they had finished, the trade room buzzed with whispered comment. At a nod from Wallace, Gillies questioned the elder Lelac in Cree for the benefit of the Indians.

“You say that these blankets here, this knife and a cooking kit, and the clothes and bags, were all that you found at the camp—that there were no fur and rifles on the cache?”

“These were all we found, nothing else,” replied Lelac, his small eyes wavering before the gaze of the factor.

“You swear that you found nothing but these things,” repeated Gillies, pointing to the articles on the floor in front of the table.

“Nothing.”

The set face of Jean Marcel, which had remained expressionless during the Lelacs’ statement, relaxed in a wide smile which did not escape many a shrewd pair of Cree eyes.

“Jean Marcel will now relate what passed, on the Ghost through the moons of the long snows.”

With the announcement there was much stirring and shuffling of moccasins, accompanied by suppressed exclamations and muttering, among the expectant Crees. But when Marcel rose, squared his wide shoulders, and with head high ran his eyes over the assembled Crees, friendly and hostile, to rest at length on the Lelacs, his lips curled with an expression of contempt, while the Indians and breeds relapsed into silence.

Slowly and in detail, Jean told in the Cree language how his partners had gone upriver when he started south on the trail of the dog thieves who had stolen Fleur; how he recaptured Fleur and later reached the Ghost at the freeze-up. The tale of his eight-hundred-mile journey to the south coast drew many an “Ah-hah!” of mingled surprise and admiration from those who remembered Marcel’s voyage of the previous spring through the spirit-haunted valleys of the Salmon headwaters. With his familiarity with the Cree mental make-up and his French instinct for dramatic values, he held them breathless by the narration of this odyssey of the North.

Then Marcel described the long weeks when the three men fought starvation, with the deer and rabbits gone; how he traveled far into the land of the Windigo in search of beaver; and finally, he came to the break with his partners. The hard feeling which developed at the camp on the Ghost, Jean made no attempt to gloss over, but boldly told how the others had not played fair with the food, and he had left them to fight out the winter alone. Of the death of Piquet he spoke as one speaks of the extermination of vermin. An assassin in the night, Piquet had come to the tent of a sleeping man and the dog alone had saved his life.

They called his dog the “man-killer.” Would they have asked less of their own huskies? But if any of them doubted, and he understood that the Lelacs were among these, that his dog could have killed Piquet, let them come to the tent in the mission stockade by night—and learn for themselves.

“Nama! No!” some Indian audibly protested, and for a space the room was a riot of laughter. The Crees had seen Fleur, the man-killer.

But when the narrative of Marcel reached the discovery of the dead Antoine, stabbed to the heart in the shack on the Ghost, his voice broke with emotion. When he had found Antoine, killed in his sleep by Piquet, Marcel said that he had bitterly regretted that he had not taken Beaulieu with him, leaving Piquet to work out his own fate.

Then Jean described how he had lashed the body of Antoine, sewed in a tent, upon the platform cache, and placed the fur packs and rifles beside it when he left to go into the barrens for deer. Turning, the French man pointed his finger at the scowling Lelacs.

“When you came to the camp this spring,” he cried, “you did not find the body of Antoine Beaulieu buried on the shore; you found it on the cache sewed in a tent. If I had killed him would I not have hidden him somewhere in the snow where the starving lynx and wolverenes would have done the rest? No, you found Antoine on the cache, and beside him were his rifle and fur pack with those of Joe Piquet. What did you do with them?”

His evil face distorted with rage, the elder Lelac snarled: “You lie! You got de fur and rifle hid!”

Suppressing the half-breeds, Wallace ordered Marcel to continue.

Jean finished his story with the account of his long journey into the barrens beyond the Height-of-Land where the streams flowed northeast instead of west, and told of his meeting with the returning deer when weak with starvation, and of his return to the Ghost to find that a canoe had preceded him there.

As he resumed his seat, the eyes of Julie Breton were suspiciously bright. The priest leaned over and grasped Jean’s hand, whispering: “Well done, Jean Marcel!”

It had been a dramatic narration, and the audience, including Inspector Wallace to whom it was interpreted by Gillies, had been impressed by the frank and fearless manner of its telling. Angus McCain and big Jules smiled widely as they caught Marcel’s eyes.

Again Gillies rose.

“Jules!” he called, and Duroc brought from an adjoining room a bundle of pelts, placing them on the long table.

Again the room hummed with the whispering of the curious audience. The surprised Lelacs, now in a panic, talked excitedly, heads together.

“Marcel, examine these pelts, and if you notice anything about them, make a statement,” said Gillies, conducting the examination for the benefit of the Crees in their native tongue and translating to Wallace.

With great care, as his Cree audience craned their necks to watch what the Frenchman was doing, Jean, first examining each pelt, slowly divided the bundle of skins into three separate heaps.

“Have you anything to say?”

“Yes, m’sieu. This large pile here, I know nothing about; but this heap here are all pelts trapped last winter by Antoine Beaulieu.”

A murmur passed through the crowded room. Here surely was something of interest. Lelac rose and started to look at the pelts. Big Jules pushed him roughly back on the bench.

“You stay where you are, Lelac, or I’ll put a guard over you!” rasped Gillies.

“This pile here,” continued Jean, “belonged to Joe Piquet.”

“How do you recognize them?” demanded Gillies.

“All these have Antoine’s mark, one little slit behind the right foreleg. These with two slits behind the left foreleg, were the pelts of Piquet. My mark was three slits in front of the left hind leg. When we started trapping from the same camp, we agreed on these marks.”

The air of the trade room was heavy with suspense.

“You swear to these marks?”

“Yes, m’sieu.”

“François Maskigan!” The treaty chief of the South Branch Crees, a man of middle age, with great authority among the Indians, stepped forward.

“François, yu have heard what Marcel says of the marks on these skins?”

The chief nodded. “Enh. Yes.”

“Look at them and see if he speaks rightly.”

It took the Indian but a few minutes to check the distinguishing marks on the pelts and examine the large pile which Marcel had said possessed none.

“Are the marks on these pelts as Marcel says?”

“Yes, they are there, these marks as he says.”

The cowed Lelacs, their dark faces now twisted with fear, awaited the next words of Gillies. Then the irate factor turned on them.

“Gaspard Lelac!” he roared. The face of Lelac paled to a sickly white as his furtive eyes met the factor’s. “All this fur, here, you and your sons traded in last week; your own fur, and the pelts of Beaulieu and Joe Piquet, dead men. I have held them separate from the rest. You are thieves and liars!”

The bomb had exploded. At the words of the factor the trade room became a bedlam of chattering and excited Indians. In the North, to steal the fur of another is one of the cardinal sins. The supporters of Marcel loudly exulted in the turn the hearing had taken, while the deluded adherents of the Lelacs, maddened by the villainy of men who had stolen from the dead and accused another, loudly cursed the half-breeds.

Nonplused, paralyzed by the trick of the factor, instigated by the adroit Marcel, the Lelacs sent murderous looks at Jean who smiled contemptuously in their faces.

Gillies’ deep bass quieted the uproar.

“Jules!” he called the second time. All were on tiptoe to learn what further surprise the stalwart Jules had in store for them when he entered the room with two rifles which he laid on the table, while the Lelacs stared in wide-eyed amazement.

“Where did you get these rifles?” asked Gillies.

“In the tepee of Lelac, just now, hidden under blankets.”

“Whose rifles were they, Marcel?”

Marcel examined the gun.

“This .30-.30 gun belonged to Piquet. This is the rifle of Antoine.”

With a cry, a tall half-breed roughly shouldered his way to the front of the excited Crees.

“You thieves!” he cried, straining to reach the Lelacs with the knife which he held in his hand. But sinewy arms seized him and the frenzied uncle of Antoine Beaulieu was pushed, struggling, from the room.

It was the final straw. The mercurial Crees had turned as quickly from the Lelacs to Marcel as, in the first instance, they had credited the tale of the half-breeds. Now, with the Lelacs proven liars and thieves, Jean’s explanation of the deaths of his partners, as Gillies foresaw, had, without corroboration and on his word as a man only, been at once accepted. Calling for silence Gillies again spoke to the hunters.

“You have heard the words of these men. You have judged who has spoken with a double tongue and who, with the guns of dead men hidden in a tepee, have traded their fur and put their blood upon the head of another. Do you believe Jean Marcel when he says that Piquet killed Antoine Beaulieu and went out to kill him also, or do you believe the men who stole the guns and fur of a dead man, which belong to his kinsmen?”

“''Enh! Enh!'' Jean Marcel speaks truth!” cried the Crees, and the chattering mob poured out into the post clearing to carry the news to the curious young men and the women who waited.

Meanwhile Père Breton embraced the happy Marcel while the unchecked tears welled in Julie’s eyes. Then Gillies and McCain wrung the Frenchman’s hand until he grimaced. But the big Jules, patiently waiting his turn, pounced upon Jean with one of his bearish hugs and, in spite of his protests, carrying him from the trade house like a child in his great arms, showed the man they had maligned to the Crees, who now loudly cheered him.

Turning to Gillies, the inspector said gravely: “These Lelacs go south for trial. I’ll make an example of their thieving.”

But Colin Gillies had no intention of having the half-breeds sent “outside” for trial, if he could prevent it. It would mean that Jean and he, himself, with Jules, would have to go as witnesses. He could take care of the Lelacs in his own way. He had punished men before.

“That would leave us very short-handed here. The famine has reduced the trade this year a third. If we want to make a showing next season, we can’t spend six months traveling down below for a trial.”

“True. That would mean your going and we can’t afford to injure the trade; but I ought to make a report on this murder business in famine years.”

“If you get the government into this, it will hurt us, Mr. Wallace. Why can’t we handle this matter as we have handled it for two centuries?” protested Gillies. “A report will only place the company in a bad light—make them think we can’t control the Crees.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” admitted Wallace. “I’m out to make a showing on the east coast, and I don’t want to handicap you.”

So Gillies had his way.