ed to keep the flour
untouched for emergency, but the half-breeds, characteristically
optimistic, counted on a return of the caribou, and they always had
rabbit to fall back upon.

During the last week in January while following his trap-lines, Jean
made a discovery the gravity of which drove him in haste back to the
camp on the Ghost.

"How many long snows since de plague, Joe?" he asked.

His comrades turned startled eyes on the speaker. Piquet slowly counted
on his fingers the winters since the last plague all but exterminated
the snow-shoe rabbits, then leaping to his feet, cried: "By Gar! eet ees
not dees year. No, no! de ole man at de trade said de nex' long snow
after dees will be de plague."

"Well, de old men were wrong," Marcel calmly insisted, as his companions
paled at the meaning of his words. "Eet ees dees year w'en you net
leetle feesh, dat de rabbits die."

"No, eet ees a meestake!" they protested as the lean features of the
Frenchman hardened in a bitter smile.

"On de last trip to my traps," went on the imperturbable Marcel, "I find
four rabbit dead from de plague an' since de last snow I cross few fresh
tracks."

"I fin' none een two days myself," echoed Antoine.

The stark truth of Marcel's contention drove itself home. At last,
convinced, they gazed with blanched faces into each others' eyes from
which looked fear--fear of the dread weeks of the March moon and the
slow death which starvation might bring. The grim spectre which ever
hovers over the winter camps in the white silences now menaced the
shack on the Ghost.

Shortly, fresh rabbit tracks became rare. After years of plenty, the
days of lean hunting for lynx and fox had returned. The plague, which
periodically sweeps the north, would bring starvation, as well, to many
a tepee of the improvident children of the snows.

CHAPTER XIII

POOR FLEUR

As the weeks went by, the food cache at the camp on the Ghost steadily
shrank. The nets under the ice and the set-lines were now bringing no
fish. More and more Jean slept in his half-way camp ten miles north, for
although the short rations he fed Fleur had been obtained solely by his
own efforts, Joe and Antoine objected to the well-nourished look of the
puppy while they grew thin and slowly weakened. But, for generations,
the huskies have been accustomed to starvation, and if not slaving with
the sleds, will for weeks show but slight effect from short rations.
Besides, Fleur h