back. There were no signs of the third man's
outfit about the camp. If the third man was alive, what were they to
believe? Antoine was dead, and Piquet, also, for his blankets were
there. Someone had killed Antoine and Piquet. There was but one other,
Marcel. So they travelled to Whale River with the news.

The sons of Lelac glibly corroborated the story of their father. When
they had finished, the trade-room buzzed with whispered comment.

At a nod from Wallace, Gillies questioned the older Lelac in Cree for
the benefit of the Indians.

"You say that these blankets here, this knife and cooking kit, and the
clothes and bags, were all that you found at the camp--that there were
no fur and rifles on the cache?"

"These were all we found--nothing else," replied Lelac, his small eyes
wavering before the gaze of the factor.

"You swear that you found nothing but these things," repeated Gillies,
pointing to the articles on the floor in front of the table.

"Nothing."

The set face of Jean Marcel, which had remained expressionless during
the Lelacs' statement, relaxed in a wide smile which did not escape many
a shrewd pair of Cree eyes.

"Jean Marcel will now relate what passed on the Ghost through the moons
of the long snows."

With the announcement, there was much stirring and shuffling of
moccasins accompanied by suppressed exclamations and muttering, among
the expectant Crees. But when Marcel rose, squared his wide shoulders,
and with head high ran his eyes over the assembled Crees, friendly and
hostile, to rest at length on the Lelacs, his lips curled with an
expression of contempt, while the Indians and breeds relapsed into
silence.

Slowly, and in detail, Jean told in the Cree language how his partners
had gone up-river when he started south on the trail of the dog-thieves;
how he recaptured Fleur, and later reached the Ghost at the
"freeze-up." The tale of his nine-hundred-mile journey to the south
coast drew many an "Ah-hah!" of mingled surprise and admiration from
those who remembered Marcel's voyage of the previous spring through the
spirit-haunted valleys of the Salmon headwaters. With his familiarity
with the Cree mental make-up and his French instinct for dramatic
values, he held them breathless by the narration of this Odyssey of the
north.

Then Marcel described the long weeks when the three men fought
starvation, with the deer and rabbits gone; how he travelled far into
the land of the Windigo