Breed of the Wolf/Chapter 27

June once more found Marcel paddling into Whale River. The sight of the high-roofed mission where he had known so much of joy and pain quickened his stroke. He wondered whether Julie had gone away with Wallace at Christmas or whether there would be a wedding when the trade was over and the steamer would take them to East Main. Avoiding the mission, until he had learned from Jules what he longed to know, Marcel went up to the trade house, where he found Gillies and McCain.

Too proud to speak of what was nearest his heart, he told his friends of his winter in the Salmon country. It had paid him well. When he tossed on the counter three glossy black-fox pelts and six skins of soft, silver-gray, alone worth well over a thousand dollars even at the low prices of the Far North, the eyes of Gillies and Angus McCain bulged in amazement. Cross fox, shading from the black of back and shoulder of rich mahogany, followed, and dark-sheened marten—the Hudson Bay sable of commerce—and thick gray pelts, of the fisher. Otter, lynx and mink made up the balance of his fur pack.

“My Lord, the Salmon headwaters must be alive with fur!” exclaimed Gillies examining the skins; “and most of them are prime.”

“Dere ees much fur in dat countree,” laughed Jean, “eef de Windigo don’ ketch you. Ah, Michel?”

Michel, proud of his part in so successful a winter and in having bearded the demons of the Salmon in their dens and lived to tell the tale, blushed at the memory of the snowy owl.

“This is the largest catch of fur traded in my time, at Whale River, Jean,” said Gillies. “What are you going to do with all your credit? You can’t use it on yourself, you’ll have to get married and build a shack here.”

Blood darkened his bronzed face, but Marcel made no reply.

He had indeed wrung a handsome toll from the haunted hills, which, tabooed by Cree trappers for generations, were tracked by the padded feet of countless fur bearers. After allowing Michel a generous interest in the fur, Marcel found that he had increased his credit at the post by over two thousand dollars, giving him in all a trade credit of twenty-six hundred dollars with the company. He could in truth afford to marry and build a shack if he were made a company servant. But the girl

Then he heard Gillies’ voice.

“Jean, I want you and Angus to go up to the Komaluk Islands with a York boat. The whalers are getting the Husky trade which we ought to have. They will ruin them with whisky.”

“Ver’ well, m’sieu!”

Marcel drew a breath of relief. If Julie were not already married, he would be only too glad to go north—to be spared seeing her made the wife of Wallace.

Then Jules appeared. After the customary hug, Jean drew the big head man outside, demanding in French:

“Is she here still? They were not married at Christmas? When do they marry?”

Jules shook his head. “A letter came by the Christmas mail. By the company he was ordered at once to Winnipeg. He is there now and will not come this summer.”

“And Julie, is she well?”

“Yes.”

“When, then, will they marry?”

Jules shrugged his great shoulders. “Christmas maybe. Perhaps next June. No one knows.”

Marcel was strangely elated at the news. Julie was not yet out of his life. She would be at Whale River on his return from the Komaluk Islands—even though he was held all summer.

The welcome of Julie and Père Breton at the mission temporarily drove from Marcel’s thoughts the coming separation. Far into the night the three friends talked while Julie’s skillful fingers were busy with her trousseau. She spoke of the postponement of her wedding, due to the presence of Inspector Wallace at the headquarters of the company at Winnipeg. Julie’s olive skin flushed with her pride as she said that he had been mentioned already as the next chief inspector. Wallace had already become a Catholic, but the uncertainty of the time of his return to the east coast might cause the delay of the ceremony until the following June.

Marcel’s hungry eyes did not leave the girl’s face as she talked of her future—the future he had dreamed of sharing. The wound was still raw, and he was glad to escape the acute suffering which her nearness caused by leaving Fleur and her puppies in Julie’s care and starting with McCain the following morning in a York boat loaded with trade goods for the north coast.

In August the York boat returned from the Komaluk Islands and Jean drew his supplies for another winter on Big Salmon waters. To Gillies who urged him to accept a regular berth and put his team of half-breed wolves on the mail route to Rupert—for the winter previous the scarcity of good dogs along the coast had been the cause of the Christmas mail not reaching Whale River until the second of January—Marcel turned a deaf ear. In another year, he said, he would carry the mail up the coast, but his puppies were still too young to be pushed hard through a blizzard. Another year and he would show the posts down the coast what a real dog team could do.

Glancing at McCain, Gillies shook his head resignedly, for he knew well why Jean Marcel wished to avoid Whale River.

On the morning of his departure, as Jean stood with Michel on the beach by the canoe, surrounded by his four impatient dogs, Julie stooped and kissed the white marking between Fleur’s ears, whispering a good-by. Turning her head in response, the dog’s moist nose and rough tongue reached the girl’s hand.

“Lucky Fleur!” Jean said to his friends.

“It’s sure worth while being a dog, sometimes,” drawled Angus McCain with a grimace. But Julie Breton ignored the remarks, wishing Marcel Godspeed.

Through the day as they traveled Marcel looked on the high shores of the Salmon with unseeing eyes, for in them was the vision of a girl.