feeling of a heavy load loosed from his shoulders
that the Frenchman left the Ghost. Disgusted with the laziness and lack
of foresight of his partners in the autumn; through the strain and worry
of the winter he had gradually lost all confidence in their capacity to
fight through until spring brought back the fishing; and now this
robbery of his cache and the affair with Piquet had made him a free man.

For Antoine, the friend of his youth, ever easily led but at heart,
honest enough, he held only feelings of disgust; but with the
crooked-souled Piquet, henceforth it should be war to the knife. Knowing
that there were more beaver in the white valleys of the Salmon country,
Marcel faced with hope the March crust and the long weeks of the April
thaws, when rotting ice would bar the waterways and soggy snow, the
trails, to all travel. Somehow, he and Fleur would pull through and see
Julie Breton and Whale River again. Somehow, they would live, but it
meant a dogged will and day after day, many a white mile of drudgery for
himself and the dog he loved. Crawl starved and beaten into Whale
River--caught like a mink in a trap by the pinch of the pitiless
snows--no Marcel ever did, and he would not be the first.

The February dusk hung in the spruce surrounding the half-way camp of
Marcel beside a pond in the hills dividing the watershed of the Ghost
from the Salmon. For three days Jean had been picking up his traps
preparatory to making the break north to the beaver country. With a
light load, for Fleur could not haul much over her weight on a freshly
broken trail in the soft snow, the toboggan-sled stood before the tent
ready for an early start under the stars. From the smoke-hole of the
small tepee the sign of cooking rose straight into the biting air, for
there was no wind. But the half-ration of trout and beaver which was
simmering in the kettle would leave the clamoring stomach of the man
unsatisfied. With the three beaver he had brought from the north and the
fish and caribou from the Ghost, Marcel still had food for himself and
his dog for a fortnight, but he was not an Indian and was husbanding his
scanty store. Fleur had already bolted her fish, more supper than her
master allowed himself, for Fleur was still growing fast and her need
was greater.

Disliking the smoke from the fire which often filled the tepee, Fleur
slept outside under the low branches of a fir, and when it snowed,
waked warm beneath a white blanke