Breed of the Wolf/Chapter 24

Deep in the night a long, mournful howl, repeated again and again, roused the sleeping post. Straightway the dogs of the factor and the Crees, followed by the Eskimos’ huskies on the beach, were pointing their noses at the moon in dismal chorus. With muttered curse and protest from tepee, shack and factor’s quarters, the wakened people of the post covered their ears and sought sleep, for no hour is sacred to the moon-baying husky and no one may suppress him. One wakes, and lifting his nose, pours out his canine soul in sleep-shattering lament, when, promptly, every husky within hearing takes up the wail.

The post dogs, having, alternately, and in chorus, to their hearts’ content and according to the custom of their fathers, transformed the calm July night into a horror of sound, again sought sleep with noses buried in bushy tails. Once more the mellow light of the moon bathed the sleeping fur post, when from the stockade behind the mission rose a long-drawn note of grief.

The dark brows of Père Breton, watching beside the delirious Marcel, contracted.

“Could it be?” he queried aloud. Curious, the priest glanced at his patient, then went outside to the stockade. There, with gray nose thrust between the pickets stood Fleur. As he approached, the dog growled, then sniffing, recognized a friend of the master who sometimes fed her, and whined.

“What is the matter, Fleur? Do you miss Jean Marcel?”

At the mention of the loved name, the dog lifted her massive head and the deep throat again vibrated with the utterance of her grief for one who had not returned.

“She has waked to find the blanket of Jean Marcel empty, and mourns for him!”

Père Breton returned to his vigil beside the wounded man.

When the early dawn flushed the east, the grieving Fleur was still at her post at the stockade gate awaiting the return of Jean Marcel. And not until the sun lifted above the blue hills of the valley of the Whale did she cease her lament to seek her complaining puppies.

At daylight McCain and Jules, coming to relieve the weary priest, found Julie sitting with him. The wound was a long slashing one, but the lungs of Marcel seemed to have escaped. The fever would run its course. There was little to do but wait, and hope against infection.

Greeting Julie, whose dark eyes betrayed a lack of sleep and whose face reflected an agony of anxiety, the men called Père Breton outside the mission.

“The Lelacs will not go south for trial, father,” said McCain dryly.

“What do you mean? Why not?” demanded the astonished priest.

“Well, because there’s no need of it now,” went on McCain mysteriously.

“No need of it! I don’t understand. They have done enough harm here. If they don’t go, the Crees will do something”

“The Crees have done something,” interrupted. McCain.

“You don’t mean” queried the priest, light slowly dawning upon him.

“Yes, just that. They overpowered and bound the guard, last night, and—well, they made a good job of it!”

“Killed the prisoners?” The priest slowly shook his head.

McCain nodded. “We found them both knifed in the heart. On the old man was a piece of birch bark, with the words: ‘This work done by friends of Jean Marcel.’”

The priest raised his hands. “It would have been better to send them south. Still, they were evil men, and deserved their fate. Tell nothing of it to Julie. She has taken this thing very hard.”

When Wallace and Gillies had surveyed the bodies of the dead half-breeds, the factor turned grimly to his chief.

“Well, Wallace, I don’t see how we can send the Lelacs south for trial now. They wouldn’t keep that long.”

“Gillies,” said the inspector with a frown, ignoring the ghastly witticism, “I want you to run down the men who did this. Whether they deserved it or not, I won’t have men murdered in this district without trial. The lawlessness of the east coast has got to stop.”

Gillies turned away, suppressing with difficulty his anger. Shortly in control of his voice, he answered:

“Mr. Wallace, I have put in many years, boy and man, on this coast, and I think I understand the Crees. To punish the men who did this, provided we knew who they were, would be the worst thing the company could do. When the Lelacs stole Beaulieu’s fur and rifle, they put themselves outside the Cree law, and as sure as the sun will set in Hudson Bay to-night, the Lelacs would never have got out of the bush alive this winter.”

“I know,” objected Wallace, “but to overpower our guards and kill them under our noses”

“What of it? The Lelacs had robbed a dead man and would have killed Jean Marcel—if he hadn’t been a son of André Marcel, who was a wolf in a fight. The Lelacs were three quarters Cree and the Indians here have a way of meting out justice to their own people in a case like this that even Canadian officials might envy. You may be sure that the Lelacs were formally tried and condemned in some tepee last night before this thing happened.”

“These two guards must have been asleep,” complained Wallace.

“Well, we’ll never know, Mr. Wallace. They say that they were thrown from behind and didn’t recognize the men who did it. Even if they did, they wouldn’t tell who they were, and it’s useless to try to make them. The Crees have taken the Lelacs off our hands—and have saved us time and money by ridding us of these vermin.”

Inspector Wallace slowly cooled off and in the afternoon went to the mission to make his daily call on Julie Breton only to be informed, to his surprise, that she was too tired to see him.

Meanwhile the condition of the wounded man was unchanged. But Père Breton faced a problem which he deemed necessary to discuss with his friends Jules Duroc and McCain.

Throughout the day, Fleur had fretted in the stockade, running back and forth followed by her complaining puppies, thrusting her nose between the pickets to whine and howl by turns, mourning the strange absence of Marcel.

“Fleur will not grant sleep to Whale River to-night, unless something is done,” said the priest to the two men who were acting in turn as assistant nurses.

“Why can’t we bring her in; let her see him and sniff his hand; it might quiet her?” suggested McCain. “It will only make her worse to shut her up somewhere else.”

“By gar! Who weel tak’ dat dog out again?” objected Jules. “Once she here, she nevaire leeve de room.”

“Yes, she will, Jules. She’ll go back to her pups after a while. We’ll bring them outside under the window and let ’em squeal. She’ll go back to ’em then.”

“I am strong man,” said Jules, “but I not love to hold dat dog. She weel eat Jean Marcel, she so glad to see heem, an’ we mus’ keep her off de bed.”

At that moment Julie entered the room. “I will take Fleur to see him; she will behave for me,” volunteered the girl.

So, not without serious misgivings, it was arranged that the grieving Fleur should be shown her master. That night when Julie had fed Fleur, she opened the stockade gate and, stroking the great head of the dog, said slowly:

“Fleur would see Jean—Jean Marcel?”

At the sound of the master’s name, Fleur’s ears went forward, her slant eyes turning here and there for a sight of the familiar figure. Then with a whine she looked at Julie as if for explanation.

“Fleur will see Jean, soon. Will Fleur behave for Julie?”

With a yelp the, husky leaped through the gate and ran to and fro outside, sniffing the air; then as if she knew the master were not there, returned, shaggy body trembling, every nerve tense with anticipation, slant eyes eagerly questioning as she whimpered her impatience.

Taking the dog by her plaited collar of caribou hide, to it Julie knotted a rope and led her into the mission where McCain, Jules, and Père Breton waited.

“Fleur will be good and not hurt Jean. She must not leap on his bed. He is very sick.”

Seeming to sense that something was about to happen having to do with Marcel, Fleur met the girl’s hand with a swift lick of her tongue. With the rope trailing behind, the end of which Jules and McCain seized, to control the dog in case she became unmanageable, Julie Breton opened the door of Marcel’s room, where with fever-flushed face the unconscious man lay on a low cot, one arm hanging limply to the floor. When the husky saw the motionless figure, she pricked her ears, thrusting her muzzle forward, and sniffed; and as her nose revealed the glad news that here at last lay the lost Jean Marcel, she raised her head and yelped wildly. Then swiftly nuzzling Marcel’s inert body, she started to spring upon the cot to wake him, when Julie Breton’s arms circled her neck and, aided by the drag on the rope, checked her.

“Down, Fleur! No! no! You must not hurt Jean.”

Seeming to sense that the mute Marcel was not to be roughly played with, the intelligent dog, whimpering like one of her puppies, caressed the free hand of the sick man, then, ignoring the weight on the rope dragging her back, she strained forward to reach his neck with her tongue, for his head was turned from her. But Jean Marcel did not return her caress.

Puzzled by his indifference, then sensing that harm had come to the unconscious Marcel, the dog raised her head over the cot and rocked the room with a wail of sorrow. The wounded man sighed and, turning, moaned:

“They took Fleur and now they take Julie. There is nothing left—nothing left!”

At the words, the nose of the overjoyed dog reached the hot face of Marcel, but his eyes did not see her.

Again Julie’s strong arms circled Fleur’s neck, restraining her. The slant eyes of the husky looked long into the pale face which showed no recognition; then she quietly sat down, resting her nose on his arm. And for hours, with Julie seated beside her, Fleur kept vigil beside the bed, until the priest and McCain insisted on the dog’s removal.

When Jules brought a crying puppy outside the window of the sick room, for a time Fleur listened to the call of her offspring without removing her eyes from Marcel’s face. But at length maternal instinct temporarily conquered the desire to watch by the stricken man. Her unweaned puppies depended on her for life, and for the moment mother love prevailed. With a final caress of the limp hand of Marcel, reluctantly, with head down and tail dragging, she followed Julie to the stockade.

For days Marcel’s youth and strength battled with the fever aggravated by infection in the deep wound. All that Gillies and Père Breton could do for the stricken man was done, but barring the simple remedies which stock the medicine chest at a post in the Far North and the most limited knowledge of surgery possessed by the factors, the recovery of a patient depends wholly upon his vitality and constitution. With medical aid beyond reach, men die or fight back to health through the toughness of their fiber alone.

There was a time when Jean Marcel journeyed far toward the dim hills of a land from which there is no trail home for the feet of the voyageur. There were nights when Julie Breton sat with her brother and Jules or McCain, stark fear in their hearts that the sun would never again lift above the Whale River hills for Jean Marcel, and that never again his daring paddle would flash in sunlit white water or his snowshoes etch their webbed trail on the white floor of the silent places.

And during these days the impatient Wallace chafed with longing for the society of Julie whose pity for the sick man had made of her an indefatigable nurse. A few words in the morning and an hour or two at night was all the time she allotted the man to whom she had given her heart. To the demand of the inspector in the presence of Père Breton that Julie should substitute a Cree woman as nurse, she had replied:

“He has no one but us. His people are dead. He has been like a brother to me. I can do no less than care for him, poor boy!”

“Yes,” added Père Breton, “he is as my son. Julie is right,” and added, with a smile, “you two will have much time in the future to see each other.”

So Wallace had been forced to make the best of it.

By the time that the steamer, Inenew, from Charlton Island, appeared with the English mail and the supplies and trade goods for the coming year, Jean Marcel had fought his way back from the frontiers of death. So relieved seemed the girl, who had given lavishly of her young strength, that she allowed Mrs. Gillies to take her place in the sick room while she spent with Wallace the last days of his stay at Whale River.

Once more the post people saw the lovers constantly together and more than one head shook sadly at the thought of the one who had lost, lying hurt in heart and body on a cot at the mission while another took his place beside Julie Breton.

At last the steamer sailed for Fort George and no one in the group gathered at the landing doubted that the heart of Julie Breton went with it when they saw the light in her dark eyes as she bade the handsome Wallace good-by.

It was an open secret now, communicated by Wallace to the factor, that he was to become a Catholic that autumn, and in June take Julie Breton as a bride away to East Main.