r in the
Salmon country, for the sake of their old friendship he would overlook
the half-breed's weakness under Piquet's influence, and offer to take
him.

Dawn was wavering in the gray east when Marcel reached the silent camp.
He called loudly to wake the sleeping man inside; but there was no
response.

Marcel's heavy eyebrows contracted in a puzzled look.

"Allo, Antoine!" Still no answer. Was he to find here more of the work
of Joe Piquet? he wondered, as he swung back the slab-door of the shack
and peered into the dim interior.

There in his bunk lay the half-breed.

"Wake up, Antoine!" Marcel cried, approaching the bunk; then the faint
light from the open door fell on the gray face of Antoine Beaulieu,
stiff in death.

"Tiens!" muttered Marcel. "Stabbed tru de heart w'en he sleep. Joe
Piquet, he t'ink to get our feesh and beaver and fur, den he tell dem at
Whale Riviere we starve out. Poor Antoine!"

Sick with the discovery, Jean sat beside the dead man, his head in his
hands. Bitterly now, he regretted that he had refused the hand of his
old friend in parting; that he had not taken him with him when he left
the Ghost. It was clear that before starting to stalk Marcel's camp,
Piquet had deemed it safer to seal the lips of Beaulieu forever as to
the fate of the man he planned to kill.

"Poor Antoine!" Marcel sadly repeated. Outside, Fleur, fretting at the
presence of death, whined to be off.

In the cold sunrise, Jean lashed the body of his boyhood friend, which
he had sewed in some canvas, on the food cache, that it might rest in
peace undefiled by the forest creatures, until on his return in May he
might give it decent burial. Beside it he placed the fur-packs, rifles
and outfits of the two men.

"Adieu, Antoine!" he called, waving his hand at the shrouded shape on
the cache, and turned north.

CHAPTER XVI

THE STARVING MOON

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 same time hunting widely for
food. Soon, the sun, mounting higher and higher each day at noon, would
begin to soften the surface of the snow which the freezing nights would
harden into crust. Then he could travel far and fast. With much
searching he had found another beaver lodge, postponing for a space the
days when man and dog would have not even half rations to stay their
hunger. The