CHAPTER XX
THE DEAD MAN TELLS HIS TALE
When, late in May, the snow had left the open places reached by the sunand the ice cleared the rivers, Marcel was ready to make his first tripto the camp on the Ghost. Poor Antoine would have to lie content in ashallow grave among the boulders of the river shore, for the frost wasstill in the ground. Before the weather softened Jean had smoked theremainder of his meat and now he faced a ten-mile portage with hisoutfit. Before the trails went bad he could have freighted on the sledsufficient food for his journey home but had preferred to face the"break-up" in his own camp near a fish-lake and relay his meat over onhis back in May. The memories of the winter aroused by the camp on theGhost were too grim to attract him to the comfortable shack.
One morning at sunrise, after lashing a pack on Fleur's broad back, hethrew his tump-line over a bag of smoked meat and swinging it to hisshoulders, started over the trail. In the middle of the forenoon hewalked into the clearing on the Ghost and pushing off the head strap ofhis line, dropped his load.
Glancing at the cache where he had left the body of Antoine Beaulieulashed in canvas with the fur-packs and rifles of the dead men, Marcelmuttered in surprise:
"By Gar! Dat ees strange t'ing!"
The scaffold was empty; the body of Antoine had been removed and not avestige remained of the fur-packs and outfits of Jean's partners.Neither wolverines, lynxes nor bears, had they been able to overcome thefish-hook barriers guarding the uprights, would have stripped theplatform in such fashion. Searching the soft earth, he found the fainttracks of moccasins which the recent rain had not obliterated. But downon the river shore the mud told the story. A canoe had landed therewithin a week, for in spite of the rain the deep impress of the feet ofmen carrying heavy loads still marked the beach. Since the ice went outsomeone who knew that the three men were wintering there, had travelledup the Ghost from the Whale, but why? They could not have been starving,for fish could then be had on the Whale for the setting of a net.Evidently they had buried Antoine and taken the fur-packs, rifles, andoutfits of the two men to Whale River. Marcel searched for a message, inthe phonetic writing employed throughout the north, burned into a blazedtree, or on a scrap of birch-bark, left in the shack, but foundnothing. The cabin was as he had last seen it. They had thought him,also, dead somewhere in the "bush" and had left no word, or----Then thesituation opened to him from the angle of view of the Cree visitors.
A camp on the verge of starvation, witnessed by the depleted cache; adead man stabbed to the heart, with his rifle and outfit beside him;also, the rifle and personal belongings, easily identified by hisrelatives, of a second man, who, if he were still alive, would have hadthem in his possession. Of the third man, who was to winter with them,no trace at the camp. Two dead and the third, possibly alive, if he hadnot starved out. And that third man was Jean Marcel.
That was the grim tale which was travelling down the river ahead of himto the spring trade. Who killed Antoine Beaulieu, and where is Piquet?This was the question he would have to answer. This the factor and thekinsmen of his partners would demand of the third man, if he survived toreach the post. Yes, Whale River would anxiously await the return ofJean Marcel that spring, but would Whale River believe his story? Of thepeople of the post he had no doubt. Julie, Pere Breton, the factor,Angus, Jules, he could count on. They knew him--were his friends. Butthe Crees, and half-breds; would they believe that Joe Piquet had beenthe evil genius of the tragedy on the Ghost, Joe Piquet, now dead andhelpless to speak in his own defense? Would they believe in theinnocence of the man who alone of the three partners had fought free ofthe long famine? Marcel's knowledge of the Indians' mental make-up toldhim that since the visit of the Crees to the camp his case was hopeless.
They would readily believe that he had killed his partners for theremaining food, and, not anticipating the coming of a canoe in thespring to the camp, had gone after caribou, planning to secrete the bodyof Antoine, with its evidence of violence, on his return.
Of those who had peopled the canoes starting for the up-river summercamps in July, many a face would now be absent when the Crees returnedfor this year's trade. Famine surely had come to more than one camp ofthe red hunters that winter; and doubtless, swift death in the night,also, among some of those, who, when caught by the rabbit plague and theabsence of wintering caribou, like Piquet, went mad with hunger.Disease, too, as a hawk strikes a ptarmigan, would have struck down manya helpless child and woman marooned in snow-drifted tepee in the silentplaces. Old age would have claimed its toll in the bitter Januarywinds.
To the red hunters, starvation and tragic death wore familiar faces. Inthe wide north they were common enough. So, when in the spring, menloosed from the maw of the pitiless snows returned without comrade, wifeor child, seeking succor at the fur-posts, with tales of death bystarvation or disease, the absence of witnesses or evidence compelledthe acceptance of their stories however suspicious the circumstances.There being no proof of guilt, and because, moreover, their tales wereoften true, there could be no punishment, except the covert condemnationof their fellows or the secret vengeance of kinsman or friend in theguise of a shot from the "bush" or knife thrust in the dark. He recalledthe cases he knew or which he had heard discussed over many a camp-fire,of men on the East Coast, sole survivors of starvation camps, who wouldgo to their graves privately branded as murderers by their fellows.
Grim tales of his father returned to him; of the half-breed fromNichicun who, it was commonly believed, had eaten his partner; of Creeswho had appeared in the spring at the posts without parents, or wivesand children, to tell conflicting stories of death through disease orstarvation; of the Frenchman at Mistassini--still a valued servant ofthe Company--who was known from Fort Albany to Whale River and fromRupert to the Peribonka, as the squaw-man who saved himself on theFading Waters by deserting his Montagnais girl wife. These and manymore, through lack of any proof of guilt, had escaped the long arm ofthe government which, through the fur-posts, reached to the uttermostvalleys of the north.
And so it must have been with Jean Marcel, however suspicious his story,had he buried Antoine somewhere in the snow, as he had Piquet, insteadof lashing the body on the cache with its telltale death wound. As itwas he already saw himself, though innocent, condemned in the court ofCree opinion as the slayer of his friend.
As he came to a realization of how his case would look, even to thewhites at Whale River, he cursed the dead man Piquet for bringing allthis upon a guiltless man--for leaving him this black legacy ofsuspicion.
Well, he swore to himself, they should believe his story at the post,for it was the truth; and if any man, white or red, openly doubted hisinnocence, he would have to answer to Jean Marcel. To be branded on theEast Coast as the assassin of his partners was a bitter draught for thepalate of the proud Frenchman. For generations the Marcels had borne anhonored name in the Company's service and now for the last of them to besuspected of foul murder, was disgrace unthinkable.
So ran his thoughts as he hurried back over the trail to his camp. Ofone thing he felt sure. The situation brought about by the visit of theCrees demanded his presence at the post as soon after their arrival ashis paddle could drive his canoe. From the appearance of the tracks onthe beach they already had a good start and it would take two days forhim to pack to the Ghost what meat and outfit he needed for the trip,besides his furs. The rest he could cache.
The Whelps of the Wolf Page 21
