k to his old winter camp, returning with traps. These he
set at the carcasses he had shot, for foxes, lynxes and wolverines were
drawn from the four winds to his kill. So while he hunted meat to carry
him through April, and home, at the same time he added materially to his
fur-pack.

Toward the end of March, before the first thaws softened his back trail
and made sled-travel heart-breaking for Fleur, Jean began relaying west
the meat he had shot. He had now, cached in the barrens, ample food to
supply Fleur and himself until the opening of the waterways when fish
would be a most welcome change. His sledding over, he returned to his
camp in the barrens to get his traps and take one last hunt, for the
lean weeks of the winter had made him over-cautious and he wished to
make the trip back with a loaded sled.

By the coming of April, Fleur, in whom an abundance of red caribou meat
had swiftly worked a metamorphosis, had increased in bone and weight. As
Jean watched her throw her heavy shoulders into her collar and trot
lightly off over the hard trail with a two hundred pound load his heart
leaped with love of the beautiful beast who worshipped him with every
red drop in her shaggy body. What a team she would give him some day! he
thought. There would be nothing like them south of Hudson's Straits. And
the Company would need them for the winter mail packet, with Jean Marcel
to drive them.

Lately he had noticed a new trait in his dog. Several times, deep in the
night when he waked to renew the fire, he had found that Fleur was not
sleeping near him but had wandered off into the "bush." As she needed no
food, he thought these night hunts of the husky peculiar. But at dawn,
he always found Fleur back in camp sleeping beside him.

It was Marcel's last night in the barren-ground camp. Leaving Fleur, he
had, as usual, hunted all day, returning with a sled load of meat which
he drew himself. As he approached the camp he crossed the trail of a
huge timber wolf and hurried to learn if his dog had been attacked, for
tied as she was, she would fight with a cruel handicap. But Fleur
greeted him as usual with yelps of delight. In the vicinity of the camp
there were no tracks to show that the wolf had approached the husky.
However, Marcel decided that he would not leave her again bound in camp
unable to chew through the rawhide thongs in time to protect herself
from sudden attacks of the wolves which roamed the country.

After suppe