The Whelps of the Wolf

The solitudes of the East Coast had shaken off the grip of the long snows. A thousand streams and rivers choked with snow water from bleak Ungava hills plunged and foamed and ra...

In his joy at his good luck, Marcel had momentarily forgotten the ancient feud between the Esquimo and the Cree. Then he realized his position. These rapids of the Salmon were a...

When Marcel put his canoe into the water the following morning, to cross to his net, three young Esquimos, who had been loitering near Kovik's lodge, followed him to the beach,...

That night Marcel camped at the river's mouth and watched the gray waters of the great Bay drown the sinking sun. Somewhere, far down the bold East Coast the Great Whale emptied...

As the grim fastnesses reaching away to the north and east and south in limitless, ice-locked solitude, had wakened to the magic touch of spring, so the little post at Whale Riv...

The spring trade at Whale River was nearing its end. One by one the tepees in the post clearing disappeared as, each day, canoes of Cree hunters started up-river for lakes of th...

A day's hard paddle past Big Island the dreaded Cape of the Four Winds thrust its bold buttresses far out into the sea toward the White Bear, and Marcel knew that wind here mean...

Two days later, after rounding Point Comfort, Marcel was crossing the mud-flats of Gull Bay. At last the stalk was on, for somewhere in the vast marshes of the Hannah Bay coast,...

It was the first week in September. This meant a race with the "freeze-up" into Whale River, for with the autumn headwinds, it would take him a month, travel as he might. Though...

Although the stinging winds with swirls of fine snow were already driving down the valleys, and nightly the ice filmed the eddies and the backwaters, yet the swift river remaine...

One afternoon toward the end of the year when the early dusk had turned Marcel back toward camp from his most northerly line of marten traps, he suddenly stopped in his tracks o...

The first day, by hard hunting they shot three caribou, but to the surprise and chagrin of Antoine and Joe, on the second day, in a country where they had never failed to get me...

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 hi...

Deep in the night, Marcel waked cold. Lifting his head from the blankets, his face met an icy draft driving through the open door of the shack which framed a patch of sky swarmi...

It had been with the 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 th...

March, the Crees' "Moon of the Crust on the Snow," was old. Camped on a chain of lakes in the Salmon country Marcel had been following the few traps for which he had bait and at...

The warm tongue sought the face of the drowsy man, and the dog, not to be put off, thrust her nose roughly into his robe, whimpering as she pulled at his capote.

At intervals during the day Jean drank the strengthening broth, too "bush-wise" to sicken himself by gorging. By late afternoon he was able to drive the rejuvenated Fleur to the...

The snows were fading fast before the rain and sleet of the big thaw. Often, at night, the softening winds shifted, to drive in raw from the north, again tightening the land wit...

When, late in May, the snow had left the open places reached by the sun and the ice cleared the rivers, Marcel was ready to make his first trip to the camp on the Ghost. Poor An...

Three days later, he had run the strong-water of the Ghost to Conjuror's Falls, where he exchanged Beaulieu's canoe for his own, cached the previous fall, and continued on to th...

Although it would have been pure suicide for anyone to attempt to take Fleur from the stockade against her will, Marcel feared that some dark night those who wished his disgrace...

Day by day the ebb-tide brought in the canoes of returning Crees. Gradually tepees filled the post clearing. And with the coming of the hunters from the three winds, was heard m...

Marcel was walking on the high river shore above the post with Julie Breton and Fleur. Like a floor below them the surface of the Great Whale moved without ripple in the still J...

That night when Inspector Wallace had heard the story of the murders on the Ghost, he sent for Jean Marcel, to whom it was quite evident, on reporting at the trade-house, that t...

The following morning Jean Marcel forgot the cloud hanging over him in his joy at the event which had taken place since dawn. Rousing Julie and her brother, he led them to the s...

The trading-room at Whale River was crowded with the treaty chiefs and older men among the Cree hunters chosen by the factor to be present at the hearing. Behind a huge table ma...

To Jean Marcel it had been a happy moment--that of his exoneration by the hunters of Whale River. For weeks, with rage in his heart, he had silently borne the black looks of the...

One night when Jean returned late from his nets after a long paddle, seeking the exhaustion that would bring sleep and temporary respite from his grief, a canoe manned by three...

Deep in the night a long, mournful howl, repeated again and again, roused the sleeping post. Straightway the dogs of the factor and the Crees, followed by the Esquimos' huskies...

"Gillies," said the Inspector with a frown, ignoring the ghastly witticism, "I want you to run down the men who did this. Whether they deserved it or not, I won't have men murde...

For days Marcel's youth and strength battled with the fever aggravated by infection in the deep wound. All that Gillies and Père Breton could do for the stricken man was done, b...

August drew to a close. The post clearing and the beach at Whale River were again bare of tepee and lodge of the hunters of fur who had repaired to their summer camps where fish...

When the first flight of snowy geese, southward bound, flashed in an undulating white cloud over Whale River, the canoe of Jean Marcel was loaded with supplies for a winter in t...

June once again found Marcel paddling into Whale River. The sight of the high-roofed Mission, where, in the past, he had known so much of joy and pain, quickened his stroke. He...

Christmas was but a week distant. For the first time in years Jean Marcel possessed a dog-team, and through the long December nights he had come to a decision to talk to Julie B...

Two days before Christmas the team of Jean Marcel, its harness brave with colored worsted, meeting the snarls of hostile Cree curs with the like threat of white fangs, jingled g...

One hundred and fifty miles down the wind-harassed East Coast, was a man who could save Julie Breton. The mind of Marcel held one thought only as his hurrying dogs loped down th...

In the unwritten law of the north no one in peril shall ask for succor in vain. So universal is this creed, so general its acceptance and observance throughout the vast land of...

Whale River was astir. Before the trade-house groups of Crees critically inspected the dogs of Baptiste Laval, who fretted and yelped, eagerly waiting the "_Marche!_" which woul...

Fresh from a London hospital though he was, John Hunter found that the condition of Julie Breton demanded the exercise of all his skill as a surgeon. But the operation, aided by...