drawled Angus McCain
with a grimace. But Julie Breton ignored the remarks, wishing Marcel
Godspeed.

Through the day as they travelled Marcel looked on the high shores of
the Salmon with unseeing eyes, for in them was the vision of a girl
bending over a great dog.

CHAPTER XXXVI

DREAMS

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 Breton once more, as in the old
days, before she left Whale River forever.

Led by Fleur, Colin, Angus and Jules, now grown to huge huskies, already
abreast of their mother in height and bulk of bone, and showing the wolf
strain in their rangy gait and in red lower-lids of their amber eyes,
were jingling down the river trail to the festivities at the post. For,
from Fort Chimo, west across the wide north, to Rampart House, Christmas
and New Years are kept. From far and wide come dog-teams of the red
hunters down the frozen river trails for the feasting and merrymaking at
the fur-posts. Two weeks, "fourteen sleeps" on the trail, going and
coming, is not held by many a hardy hunter and his family too high a
price to pay for a few short days of trading and gossip and dancing.
There are many who trap too far from the posts and in country too
inaccessible to make the journey possible, but throughout the white
desolation of the fur lands the spirit of Christmas is strong and yearly
the frozen valleys echo to the tinkling of the bells of dog-teams and
the laughter of the children of the snows.

Over the beaten river trail, ice-hardened by the passage of many sleds
preceding them, romped Fleur and her sons, toying with the weight of the
two men and the food bags on the sled. At times, Jean and Michel ran
behind the team to stretch their legs and start their chilled blood, for
it was forty below zero. But to the dogs, travelling without wind at
forty below on a beaten trail, was sheer delight. Often, on the high
barrens of the Salmon they had slept soundly in their snow holes at
minus sixty.

As Jean watched his great lead-dog, her thick coat of slate-gray and
white glossy with superb vitality, set a pace for her rangy sons which
sent the white miles sliding swiftly past, his heart sang.

Good all day for a thousand pounds, they were, on a broken trail, and
since November he had in vain sought the limit of their staying power.
Not yet the equals of thei