The Whelps of the Wolf. George P. Marsh
relax. Pointing to a thick-set figure striding up the beach, a Husky shouted:
"There is one who goes to Whale River!"
The voyageur expelled the air from his lungs with relief. Too long, with pounding heart, he had steeled himself to face erect, swift death from the near shore. A wrong move, and a hail of lead would have emptied his canoe. Then to his joy he recognized the man who approached.
"Kovik!" he shouted. "Eet ees Jean Marcel from Whale Riviere!"
The Husky waved his hand to Marcel, joined his comrades, and, for a space, there was much talk and shaking of heads; then he called to Jean to come ashore.
Grounding his canoe, Marcel gripped the hand of the grinning Kovik while the Huskies fell back eying them with mingled curiosity and fear.
"Husky say you bad spirit, Kovik say you son little chief, Whale River. W'ere you come?"
It was clear, now, why the Esquimos had not wiped him out. They had thought him a demon, for Esquimo tradition, as well as Cree, made the upper Salmon the abode of evil spirits.
"I look for hunteen ground, on de head of riviere," explained Jean, for the admission that he was in search of dogs would only defeat the purpose of his journey.
"Good dat Kovik come," returned the Esquimo. "Some say shoot you; some say you eat de bullet an' de Husky."
To this difference of opinion Marcel owed his life.
As Kovik finished his explanation, Jean laughed: "No, I camp wid no Windigo up riviere; but I starve."
At this gentle hint, Marcel was invited to join in the supper of boiled seal and goose which was waiting at the tepee. When Kovik had prevailed upon some of the older Esquimos to forget their fears and shake hands with the man who had appeared from the land of spirits, Jean stowed his outfit on the cache of the Husky, freed his canoe of water and placing it beside his packs, joined the family party. Shaking hands in turn with Kovik's grinning wife and children, who remembered him at Whale River, Marcel hungrily attacked the kettle, into which each dipped fingers and cup indiscriminately. Finishing, he passed a plug of Company nigger-head to his hosts and lit his own pipe.
"W'ere you' woman?" abruptly inquired the thick-set mother of many.
"No woman," replied Marcel, thinking of three spruce crosses in the Mission cemetery at Whale River.
"No woman, you? No dog?" pressed the curious wife of Kovik.
"No famile." And Jean told of the deaths of parents and younger brother, from the plague of the summer before. But he failed to mention the fact that most of the dogs at the post had been wiped out at the same time.
"Ah! Ah!" groaned the Huskies at the Frenchman's tale of the scourge which had swept the Hudson's Bay posts to the south.
"He good man—Marcel! He fr'en' of me!" lamented Kovik. Sucking his pipe, he gravely nodded again and again. Surely, he intimated, the Company had displeased the spirits of evil to have been so punished. Then he asked: "W'ere you dog?"
"On Whale Riviere," returned Jean grimly, referring to their bones; his eyes held by the great dogs sprawled about the beach. No such sled-dogs as these had he ever seen at the post, even with the Esquimos. But his grave face betrayed no sign of what was in his mind.
Massive of bone and frame, with coats unusually heavy, even for the far-famed Ungava breed, Jean noted the strength and size of these magnificent beasts as a horseman marks the points of a blooded colt. Somewhat apart from the other dogs of Kovik, tumbling and roughing each other, frolicked four clumsy puppies, while the mother, a great slate-gray and white animal, lay near, watching her progeny through eyes whose lower lids, edged with red, marked the wolf strain. While those slant eyes kept restless guard, to molest one of her leggy, yelping imps of Satan would have been the bearding of a hundred furies. The older dogs, evidently knowing the power in the snap of her white fangs, avoided the puppies.
One, in particular, Marcel noticed as they romped and roughed each other on the shore, or with a brave show of valor, noisily charged their recumbent mother, only to be sent about their business with the mild reprimand of a nip from her long fangs. Larger, and of sturdier build than her brothers, this puppy, in marking, was the counterpart of the mother, having the same slate-gray patches on head and back and wearing white socks. As he watched her bully her brothers, Jean resolved to buy that four-months'-old puppy.
As the northern twilight filled the river valley, the Huskies returned to the lodge, where Jean squeezed in between two younger members of the family whose characteristic aroma held sleep from the fatigued voyageur long enough for him to decide on a plan of action. Before he started to trade for dogs he must learn if the Esquimos knew that they were scarce at the fur-posts. If rumor of this relayed up the coast from Husky hunting party to hunting party, had reached them, he would be lucky to get even a puppy. They would send their spare dogs to the posts.
The following morning, at the suggestion of Kovik, Marcel set his gill-net for whitefish on the opposite shore of the wide river, as the younger Esquimos showed unmistakably by their actions that his presence at the salmon fishing, soon to begin, was resented. But Jean needed food for his journey down the coast and for the dogs he hoped to buy, so ignored the dark looks cast at the mysterious white man, the friend of Kovik. But not until evening did he casually suggest to the Husky that he had more dogs than he could feed through the summer.
The broad face of Kovik widened in a mysterious smile as he asked: "You geeve black fox for dog?"
Marcel's hopes fell at the words. It was an unheard of price for a dog. The Husky knew.
Masking his chagrin, the Frenchman laughed in ridicule:
"I geeve otter for dog."
Kovik shook his head, his narrowed eyes wrinkling in amusement. "No husky W'ale Riv'—For' Geor'. Me trade husky W'ale Riv'."
It was useless to bargain further. The Husky knew the value of his dogs at the posts, and Jean could not afford to rob his fur-pack to get one. There was much that he needed at Whale River—and then there was Julie. It was necessary to increase his credit with the Company to pay for the home he would some day build for Julie and himself. So, when Kovik promptly refused a valuable cross-fox pelt for a dog, the disheartened boy gave it up.
But after the toil and lean days of the long trail he had taken to meet the Esquimos, he could not return to Whale River empty handed. He coveted the slate-gray and white puppy. Never had he seen a husky of her age with such bone—such promise as a sled dog. And her spirit—at four months she would bare her puppy fangs at an infringement of her rights by an old dog, as though she already wore the scars of many a brawl. Handsomer than her brothers, leader of the litter by virtue of a build more rugged, a stronger will, she was the favorite of Kovik's children. That they would object to parting with her; that the Husky would demand an exorbitant price he now knew; but he was determined to have the puppy. However, he resolved to wait until the following day, renew the bargaining for a grown dog, then suddenly make an offer for the puppy.
The next morning Jean Marcel again offered a high price for a dog, but the smiling Husky would not relent. Then Marcel, pointing at the female puppy, offered the pelt of a marten for her.
To Jean's surprise, the owner refused to part with any of the litter. They would be better than the adult dogs—these children of the slate-gray husky—he said, and he would sell but one or two, even at Whale River, where the Company needed dogs badly and would pay more than Marcel could offer.
It was a bitter moment for the lad who had swung his canoe inshore at the Husky camp with such high hopes. And he realized that it would be useless to turn north from the mouth of the Salmon in search of dogs. Now that they had learned of conditions at the fur-posts, no Esquimos bound south for the spring trade would sell a dog at a reasonable price.
As the disheartened Marcel watched with envious eyes the puppies, which he realized were beyond his means to obtain, the cries from the shore of the eldest son of his host aroused the camp. Above them, in the chutes at the foot of the white-water,