ad, from necessity and instinct, become a hunter, and
many a ptarmigan and stray rabbit she picked up foraging for herself.

To increase the difficulty of hunting for food, January had brought
blizzard after blizzard, piling deep with drifts the trails to their
trap-lines, which they still visited regularly, for the starved lynxes
were coming to the bait of the flesh of their kin in greater and greater
numbers. Twice, seeking the return of the caribou, the desperate men
travelled far into the barrens beaten by the withering January winds,
returning with wind-burned, frost-blackened faces, for no man may face
for long the needle-pointed scourge of the midwinter northers off the
Straits.

Finally, in desperation, when the flour was gone, and the food cache
held barely enough meat and fish for two weeks, Joe and Antoine insisted
that, while they had food to carry them through, they make for the post.

"You can crawl into de post lak a starving Cree because you were too
lazy to net feesh. I will stay in de bush with my dog," was Jean's
scornful reply.

But the situation was desperate. With two months remaining before the
big thaw in April, when they could rely on plenty of fish, there seemed
but one alternative, unless the caribou returned or the fish began to
move. A few trout and an occasional rabbit and ptarmigan would not keep
them alive until the "break-up," when the bear would leave their
"washes" and the caribou start north. Already with revolting stomachs
they had begun to eat starved lynx. If only they could get beaver, but
there were no beaver on the Ghost. It was clear that they must find game
shortly or retreat to Whale River.

One night Jean reached his fish cache on his return from a three days'
hunt toward the Salmon waters. At last he had found beaver, and caching
two at his tent, with his heart high with hope, was bringing the
carcasses of three more to his partners. As he approached the cache in
the gathering dusk, to his surprise he found the fresh tracks of
snow-shoes.

"Ah-hah!" he muttered, his mouth twisted in a grim smile, "so dey rob de
cache of Jean Marcel while he travel sixty mile to get dem beaver!"

The last of Fleur's pitiful little store of fish was gone. The cache was
stripped.

Jean shook his head sadly. So he could no longer trust these men whose
hunger had made them thieves, he mused. Well, he would break with them
at once. "Poor Fleur!" He patted the sniffing nose of his dog.